issue 108 www.versewisconsin.org April 2012 Verse WISCONSIN

Founded by linda Aschbrenner AS FREE VERSE 1998

VERSE DRAMA VERSE DRAMA DRAMA VERSE

Prose Features

Dramatic Poetry & Fermat’s Last Theorem “Is a brief, random, one- or two- generation explosion of verse plays by Amit Majmudar impossible? The visual fixation of modern audiences—audience implies Our Expanding Dramaverse audition, hearing; perhaps we should call by Wendy Vardaman & Greer DuBois them viewers—makes it unlikely. The technological shift, from nearly bare stage to richly detailed screen, makes it even “Verse drama isn’t just important more unlikely. The emphasis among most because Shakespeare did it. Poetry is poets on “lyric” poetry doesn’t help.” drama’s native language. Performance is poetry’s native state. Besides our —Amit Majmudar broad and deeply held belief in the VERSE DRAMA power of poetry and drama, singly and DRAMA VERSE in unison, to activate the imagination and to help us to make meaning, a Poetry by James Babbs ; Alessandra belief also critical to hip hop, there are Bava ; Guy R. Beining ; Michael a host of practical, artistic contributions Belongie ; Carol Berg ; Stephen Bett that drama can make to poetry.” ; Lorna Knowles Blake ; Caroline —Wendy Vardaman & Greer DuBois Collins ; Elizabeth Cook ; Bruce Dethlefsen ; Karl Elder ; R. Virgil Ellis ; Anna M. Evans ; William Ford ; Carol Lynn Grellas ; David Gross Verse Dramas by Carol Dorf & ; Jerry Hauser ; Karla Huston ; ; Autumn Stephens Kevin Drzakowski Lawrence Kessenich ; Don Kimball; ; ; Amit Majmudar Charlotte Michael Kriesel ; Barbara Lightner ; Mandel Angela Alaimo O’Donnell ; Emilie Lindemann ; Sandy Lindow ; Monica Raymond ; David Yezzi ; ; James Scannell McCormick ; James B. Nicola ; Ron Riekki ; Jenna Rindo

VERSE DRAMA ; Lou Roach ; G.A. Saindon ; Terry Savoie ; Robert Schuler ; Jo Simons ; Thomas R. Smith ; Jeanine Stevens VERSE DRAMA VERSE ; Nancy Takacs ; PhiliDRAMA p Venzke ; VERSE $8 ? Editors’ Notes ? Thanks to these donors! This issue of Verse Wisconsin includes a number of drama/poetry crossovers by poets, playwrights, performance artists, and hybrids of those categories. Interesting to note is the fact that most of these up to $100 Daniel Bachhuber pieces were labeled by their authors, probably to help their readers and audiences identify what they Mary Jo Balistreri are. Of the poetic dramas featured in the issue, both in print and online, some are in process; some Michael Belongie unpublished and, as yet, unstaged; some have been performed but unprinted; some have had a staged B. J. Best David Blackey reading, but not a full staging; some were written to be performed as a dramatic reading; others as a full, Emery Campbell large-scale production. All, however, were written with the intention of being performed, not only read. Kosrof Chantikian Jane Ewens Russell Gardner, Jr. Visit the online issue for more, with audio of some of the works in print, plus video of other recent Sarah Gilbert productions and commentary on them: The Latina Monologues, a collaborative effort by Latina poets Lucy Rose Johns Martha Kaplan in Milwaukee and beyond, has gone through several seasons and revisions, and has its roots in poets Claire Keyes theater, the choreopoem, and Spoken Word. Angela Trudell Vásquez discusses her involvement in this Judy Kolosso project online. The Lamentable Tragedie of Scott Walker, a delightfully entertaining, wise, and topical Jackie Langetieg CJ Muchhala bit of “Fakespeare” was assembled by its author, Doug Reed (with some liberal borrowings from Anvil O’Malley Shakespeare), and rehearsed in a matter of months, then performed to completely sold-out houses in Nancy Petulla Ester Prudlo two different Madison venues August-September and November, 2011. Another online example of Charles Ries poetry drama comes from the unique UW-Madison program, “First Wave,” which provides scholarships Lou Roach and mentoring to students who work seriously at the craft of Spoken Word and Hip Hop while at the Jean C. Ross Thomas R. Smith university. Finally, two dance poems—collaborations between Milwaukee poet Susan Firer and different Len Tews choreographers—raise the question: do words and movement in front of an audience create a poetry Steve and Jean Tomasko drama? You will also find our themed section of poems, “Mask and Monlogue,” online. These poems, John Walser Ed Werstein written in various personae, or incorporating speech (both dialogue and monologue), represent other Marilyn Windau drama-poetry intersections, and you’ll find further comments by us online regarding this piece of VW $100-499 108. Anonymous Charles Hughes Two prose essays comment further on the idea of verse drama: what it is, why it’s significant, where you Timothy Walsh Mary Wehner might find it. We leave you to explore the various ways that the verse dramas in this issue use poetry and what kinds of poetry, mixing them sometimes within a drama to create an effect. And we invite you to $500-999 add verse drama, however you define it, to the kinds of submissions Verse Wisconsin will now consider Richard Roe on a regular basis. over $1000 Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets Thanks to Greer DuBois and Melissa Lindstrum for volunteer proofreading help. Lingering errors are, of course, the responsibility of VW’s editors.

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[email protected] of Member Council of Literary Magazines & Presses 2 Verse wisconsin #108 April 2012 Books Received May-August 2011

Seth Abramson, Northerners, New Issues, Western Michigan U, 2011 Ellen Wade Beals, Ed., Solace, in So Many Words, Weighed Words, 2011 Richard Broderick, Rain Dance, Parallel Press, 2011 Lynn Domina, Framed in Silence, Main Street Rag, 2011 Moira Egan and Clarinda Harriss, Eds., Hot Sonnets, Entasis Press, 2011 Fabu, Journey to Wisconsin: African American Life in Haiku, Parallel Press, 2011 Richard Fein, The Required Accompanying Cover Letter, Parallel Press, 2011 Jessica Goodfellow, The Insomniac’s Weather Report, Three Candles Press, 2011 Shelly L. Hall, Alum, Popcorn Press, 2011 Scott King, Ed., Perfect Dragonfly, A Commonplace Book of Poems Celebrating a Decade & a Half of Printing & Publishing at Red Dragonfly Press, Red Dragonfly Press, 2011 Kim Nelson, Woman’s Evolution, Finishing Line Press, 2011 Thomas R. Smith, Wisconsin Spring, Poems and an Essay, Lost Music Press, 2011 Bianca Spriggs, How Swallowtails Become Dragons, Accents Publishing, 2011 Jeanine Stevens, Caught in Clouds, Finishing Line Press, 2011 Matthew Stolte, D10J11Po (Visual Poetry), eMTeVisPub #5, 2011 Jeanie Tomasko, Sharp as Want, Art by Sharon Auberle, Little Eagle Press, 2011 Marly Youmans, The Throne of Psyche, Mercer University Press, 2011

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Books Reviewed & Noted Online Advertise (Single Issue Rates) Bruce Dethlefsen, Unexpected Shiny Things,Cowfeather Press, 2011, by Julie L. Moore Business card $35 Moira Egan and Clarinda Harriss, Eds., Hot Sonnets, Entasis 1/4 page $75 Press, 2011, by Moira Richards Dave Etter, Dandelions, Red Dragonfly Press, 2010, by Lou 1/2 page $125 Roach Full page $200 Jean Feraca, I Hear Voices, A Memoir of Love, Death, and the Radio, Terrace Books (UW Press), 2011, by Linda Aschbrenner Jessica Goodfellow, The Insomniac’s Weather Report, Three Candles Press, 2011, by Athena Kildegaard Mission Statement Sarah Gorham, Bad Daughter, Four Way Books, 2011, by Charles Byrne Steve Healey, 10 Mississippi, Coffee House Press, 2010, by Verse Wisconsin publishes poetry and serves the community of poets in Melissa J. Lindstrum Wisconsin and beyond. In fulfilling our mission we: Scott King, Ed., Perfect Dragonfly, A Commonplace Book of Poems Celebrating a Decade & a Half of Printing & • showcase the excellence and diversity of poetry rooted in or related to Wisconsin Publishing at Red Dragonfly Press, Red Dragonfly Press, • connect Wisconsin's poets to each other and to the larger literary world 2011, by Linda Aschbrenner • foster critical conversations about poetry Amit Majmudar, Heaven and Earth, Story Line Press, 2011, by • build and invigorate the audience for poetry Zara Raab Linda Back McKay, The Next Best Thing, Nodin Press, 2011, by Lou Roach Kim Nelson, Woman’s Evolution, Finishing Line Press, 2011, by Zara Raab Margot Peters, Lorine Niedecker, A Poet’s Life, UW Press, Books Received September-December 2011 2011, by Linda Aschbrenner Publisher & author links available online Zara Raab, Swimming the Eel, David Robert Books, 2011, by Athena Kildegaard Edwin Romond, Alone with Love Songs, Grayson Books, 2011, Mary Alexandra Agner, The Scientific Method,Parallel Rick McMonagle, Spencer Butte Meditations, Mountains by Caroline Collins Press, 2011 and Rivers Press, 2011 Margaret Rozga, Though I Haven’t Been to Baghdad, Benu Rose Mary Boehm, Tangents, Black Leaf, 2011 Pepe Oulahan, It’s Just Business [Music CD], A Bare Bones Press, 2012, by Chloe Yelena Miller Tina Chang, Of Gods & Strangers, Four Way Books, 2011 Production, 2011 Emily Scudder, Feeding Time, Pecan Grove Press, 2011, by Robin Chapman, The Eelgrass Meadow,Tebot Bach, 2011 Margot Peters, Lorine Niedecker, A Poet’s Life, UW Press, Moira Richards Jean Feraca, I Hear Voices, A Memoir of Love, Death, and the 2011 Bianca Spriggs, How Swallowtails Become Dragons, Accents Radio, Terrace Books (UW Press), 2011 Charles Portolano, All Eyes on US, A Trilogy of Poetry, RWG Publishing, 2011, by Margaret Rozga Rigoberto González, Black Blossoms, Four Way Books, 2011 Press, 2007 Sarah Stern, Another Word for Love, Finishing Line Press, Sarah Gorham, Bad Daughter, Four Way Books, 2011 Zara Raab, Swimming the Eel, David Robert Books, 2011 2011, by Ellen Miller-Mack Deborah Hauser, Ennui, From the Diagnostic and Statistical Edwin Romond, Alone with Love Songs, Grayson Books, Jeanine Stevens, Caught in Clouds, Finishing Line Press, 2011, Field Guide of Feminine Disorders, Finishing Line Press, 2011 2011 by Zara Raab Bill Henderson (Ed.), 2012 Pushcart Prize XXXVI, Best of Alison Stine, Wait [Winner of The Brittingham Prize in Matthew Stolte, D10J11Po (Visual Poetry), eMTeVisPub #5 the Small Presses,Pushcart Press, 2011 Poetry], UW Press, 2011 & Don’t Cut, WI ProTestPO, eMTeVisPub #6, 2011, by Tom C. Hunley, The Poetry Gymnasium: 94 Proven Exercises Sarah Stern, Another Word for Love, Finishing Line Press, Lisa Vihos to Shape Your Best Verse, McFarland & Co, 2012 2011 Elizabeth Tornes, Snowbound, 2011, by Elmae Passineau Jacqueline Jones LaMon, Last Seen [Winner of the Felix Matthew Stolte & The People of the WI Protest,Don’t Tony Trigilio, Historic Diary, BlazeVOX [books], 2011, by Pollak Prize in Poetry], UW Press, 2011 Cut, WI ProTestPO, eMTeVisPub #6, 2011 Margaret Rozga Claire Kageyama-Ramakrishnan, Bear, Diamonds and Jeanie Tomasko, Tricks of Light, Parallel Press, 2011 Lisa Vihos, A Brief History of Mail, Pebblebrook Press, 2011, Crane, Four Way Books, 2011 Elizabeth Tornes, Snowbound, 2011 by Richard Swanson Amit Majmudar, Heaven and Earth, Story Line Press, 2011 Lisa Vihos, A Brief History of Mail, Pebblebrook Press, 2011 Cary Waterman, Book of Fire, Nodin Press, 2011, by Kathleen [Winnter of the Donald Justice Prize] Johnathan Wells, Train Dance, Four Way Books, 2011 Serley Blair Matthews (Poetry) & Bruce Murray (Painting), Cary Waterman, Book of Fire, Nodin Press, 2011 Mishka Zakharin, The Spleen of Fiery Dragons, Infinity Echo, Parallel Press, 2011 Greg Watson, What Music Remains, Nodin Press, 2011 Linda Back McKay, The Next Best Thing, Nodin Press, 2011 Cynthia Zarin, The Ada Poems, Alfred A. Knopf, 2010 Publishing, 2010, by Jamie Lynn Morris

VerseWISCONSIN.org 3 Among poets, however, interest Our Expanding Dramaverse in poetic drama continued throughout the 20th century, although its dominant mode by Wendy Vardaman & Greer DuBois shifted away from what Eliot meant by “poetic drama.” Closet What’s in a name? Verse drama, verse play, closet Verse drama left the commercial theaters and dramas remained popular among drama, poets/poets’ theatre/theater, monologue, became the purview of the Romantic poets, formalists in particular, while something called performance poetry, choreopoem, Spoken Word, especially Shelley and Byron. These poets wrote “poets theater” emerged to replace (as some Hip Hop theater….Some of these names, like their plays as homages to Shakespeare and as critics argue) verse drama. A number of non- dramatic monologue and the blank verse drama, exercises in blank verse. They didn’t even need affiliated groups, communities really, have used have been available a long time; the closet drama an audience: Goethe had already pioneered the “poets theater” in their name, often to mean is newer; Hip Hop theater, relatively recent. poetic closet drama, a play written for reading, something very different. The Kenning Anthology Genres change—that sounds obvious, as does the not performing, and the English Romantics of Poets Theater (an excellent book that surveys corollary: we shouldn’t expect something written adapted this convention for their verse dramas. poetic drama from 1945 to 1985), describes how today to look exactly like what was written in the By the end of the 19th century, the naturalistic these eclectic verse play and poets theaters sprang 16th century. The novel doesn’t, poems don’t, and prose of writers like Ibsen and Chekhov began to up wherever poets formed communities. The neither do verse plays. This essay is meant to be dominate theater. A few straggling verse plays did Cambridge Poets Theatre, founded in 1951 (and a practical, not scholarly, tour of those changes come into fashion, Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac also chronicled in Peter Davison’s The Fading and the shifting points where poetry and drama being the most famous, but these plays were Smile), included for a time Robert Lowell, Sylvia intersect, as well as some of the questions we have deliberately archaic. Robert Bridges’ large body Plath, Richard Wilbur, Richard Eberhardt, John enjoyed thinking about, along with our sense of of verse plays, well-known in their time, certainly Ciardi, Alison Lurie, Edward Gorey, Donald why those questions are important. fit into that category; his friend, Gerard Manley Hall, John Ashbery, and Frank O’Hara; it Hopkins, considered them mostly unreadable produced works of Lowell, Sexton, and Ashbery, So what do we even mean by verse drama? and unperformable, with their insistence on along with Richard Wilbur’s translation of A play, or any other piece of theater, written Elizabethan language and their Shakespearian Molière’s The Misanthrope. The New York Poets in poetry? Of course, this definition comes content and structure. Theatre, founded in 1961 by Diane di Prima, with problems, since the definition of neither Amiri Baraka, Alan S. Marlowe, John Herbert “theater” nor “poetry” is clear. We often show Few playwrights worked in verse in the early McDowell, and James Waring, produced the what we mean by verse drama by mentioning its 20th century, but poets rediscovered the form. works of New York City poets from di Prima greatest practitioners: Shakespeare and the other T.S. Eliot first wrote about this “revival” of verse herself to Baraka and Frank O’Hara. Elizabethan dramatists; Sophocles, Aristophanes, drama in his essay, “The Possibility of a Poetic and all Greek and Roman playwrights; and the Drama”(1921). Eliot, as well as the many poet- Many more such theaters have existed and great majority of traditional theater, folk theater, playwrights who were his disciples, such as continue to be founded, from San Francisco to and theater before the 18th Christopher Fry, assumed that verse drama was Chicago to Providence, including the Nuyorican century. Theater and poetry a dead form that needed to be re-created from Poets Theater/Cafe founded in the 70s; the lost lost formed together, through scratch, or at least from something basic, like L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E-affiliated San Francisco their common roots in music: music hall reviews (a “dangerous suggestion,” Poets Theater, 1978-84; and the more recent

can only only can the earliest poetry was always Eliot says) or light opera. This re-creation would and unrelated San Francisco Poets Theater, performed, and the earliest be the task of educated poets, like Eliot himself, founded in 2000 by Kevin Killian, co-editor performances were always who applied what they knew about page poetry of The Kenning Anthology. Black Poetry Theater, founded in 2007 by Joseph Churchwell and insipid, almost almost insipid, in verse. If we take the long to stage poetry. Once they reestablished the form, view, then our period is the an individual poet could perfect it—maybe, Eliot Dasan Ahanu in Durham, North Carolina, uses

Drama” (1921) a variation on the name, and incorporates poetry

exception, with poets writing suggests in his essay, a Modernist Shakespeare, for the page and playwrights who would understand both Modernist poetic and Spoken Word into theater performances. aspiring to naturalistic, you- innovation and popular entertainment. Perhaps Poetic Theatre Productions in NYC sponsors a could-hear-it-on-the-street inspired by his ambitious ideas of revival, Eliot Festival that promotes “Social Justice through language. wrote his own plays, including Murder in the Spoken Word, Hip Hop, & Slam.” Some Cathedral (1935), The Cocktail Party(1949). and current groups producing theater grounded in It’s only in the recent past— the fragmentary Sweeney Agonistes (1926). Other more traditional poetry include Verse Theater say the last two- or three- pro-revival writers joined Eliot, including, in Manhattan, Caffeine Theatre, founded 2002 hundred years—that poetry England, Christopher Fry (best known for The in Chicago, and Poets Theater of Maine, and theater became separate. Lady’s Not for Burning (1948)); and in America, founded by formalist poet Annie Finch. (PTM A quick overview since Maxwell Anderson (Winterset, 1935) and the has produced one verse play so far, Wolf Song Shakespeare seems to support poet Archibald MacLeish (whose 1958 J.B. won (2011), conceived at Wisconsin’s Black Earth the commonplace that verse a Pulitzer and a Tony Award). In Ireland, where Institute, where Finch met biologist/collaborator drama, though continuously poetic language has always been tolerated in Christina Eisenberg.) Although our list is by no written, has declined steadily theater more than in the United States or Britain, means complete, everywhere, it seems, poets are in quantity and quality since Yeats wrote poetic dramas at the Abbey Theatre, collaborating with performance artists, actors, that peak. In the Elizabethan followed by poet-dramatists like Austin Clarke. and musicians to create eclectic and often era, playwrights had already At the same time, poets were increasingly called experimental performances. begun writing in dramatic upon to write librettos for operas and musicals: prose, often for comedy or low- Auden is well-known for his collaborations with While poets’ interest in poetic drama, by whatever class characters (Shakespeare’s Stravinsky and Benjamin Britten, but Richard name, has remained significant in the past thirty Merry Wives of Windsor, for Wilbur wrote part of Leonard Bernstein’s years, interest in the verse drama, per se, has risen example, is entirely in prose). Candide. Among critics verse drama was a heavily once again. In 2007, the Poetry Foundation

—T. S. Eliot, “The Possibility of a Poetic S.Possibility Eliot, “Theof a —T. By the end of the 18th century, trafficked topic for the New Critics in particular, under John Barr (who writes verse dramas as the most popular plays were though by 1955, the taste for verse drama that well as poetry) established a Verse Drama Prize romantic comedies (written Eliot had described in “Poetic Drama” seems (whose first award went to John Surowiecki for in prose) and sensational to have evaporated. Mainstream productions of My Nose and Me). Many poet-critics, influenced, melodramas (theater set to verse plays were no longer commercially viable. perhaps, by Eliot, talk about verse drama in

The questions—why there is no poetic drama to-day, how the stage has questions—why The stage to-day,drama the poetic how no is there which written are plays poetic many so why art, literary on hold all pleasure—have become without all, at read,if read,and be academic. music to avoid licensing laws). terms of revival and being able (or not) to re- create a dead form. Joel Brouwer posted a short 4 Verse wisconsin #108 April 2012 I think we can still agree that verse drama is not well represented in print piece on Harriet, the Poetry Foundation’s blog or on the stage. When did you last go to see a play? When did you last go in 2009, in which he pronounced both verse drama and theater dead. (“The Possibility of a to see a verse play? When did you last see a verse play by a living writer? Poetic Drama,” poetryfoundation.org.) A parallel —Joel Brouwer, “The Possibility of a Poetic Drama” (2009) post on The Guardian’s theater blog (November, 2011), also takes a narrow view of poetry drama audience, and the components of his poetry, founder Cornelius Eady writes plays as well as and a dim view of its viability. Glyn Maxwell, his verse drama, are all incredibly vital. But poetry. In general these poets seem very invested possibly the most successful traditional verse the poetic tools, as well as the dramatic modes in creating performable poetry, whether or not dramatist said in an interview last year: “I’m and the narrative strategies, available to a 21st they’re writing poetic drama or dramatic poetry, aware that ‘verse drama’ barely exists now beyond century poet are vastly different than those invested in the voices of others and those unable myself and a couple of other eccentrics, and has available to a 16th century one. These include, to speak for themselves, and willing and capable a unique burden to bear—the weight of the great to mention just a handful, free verse, the prose of producing work that employs techniques from ones and the almost total failure of everyone poem, collage, syllabic forms from haiku 16th century poetry alongside those from the since... All I can do is keep trying to show that to Fibonacci to invented, sound poetry, orders. an audience into citizens instead of just spectators. Theater turns our get and up show more than do Theater, to demands. have democracy, makes audience, like an as We, 21st. Willing to risk dramatic language. verse on stage can make the sound we make now L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Poetry, Projectivism, on the street, in the pub, in the bedroom, in Objectivism, Spoken Word, Hip Hop, Dramatic, poetic language is also abundant Parliament.” (http://www.cherwell.org/culture/ polyphony, unreliable narrators, multiple in Hip Hop and Spoken Word Theater. Holly stage/2011/03/03/interview-glyn-maxwell) perspectives, the choreopoem, and yes, all Bass, a Cave Canem fellow, journalist and the tools also available to Shakespeare—those performance artist, was the first person to use A verse-drama session at the Association of don’t need to be thrown out just because they the term Hip Hop Theater in print in 1999, Writers & Writing Programs in 2011 featured are “old,” as the recent work of formalists and though the forms originate in 1970s/80s urban poet-playwrights, such as Barr and David Yezzi playwrights working in blank verse reminds youth culture. As a wider art form, Hip Hop is a (who appears in this issue of VW), reading from us. global movement located in the power of words, their verse dramas and discussing the form— community, and social justice. With respect past, present, and future. The session, “Writing What might contemporary verse drama to theatrical performances, Spoken Word Plays with Poetry: The Place of Verse Drama look like if it incorporated an array of and Hip Hop Theater are multi-disciplinary in Contemporary Literature and Theater,” left contemporary poetic strategies? and multi-cultural, with contributions, us with possibly more questions than when especially, from African American and Latino we arrived: Is this really what contemporary The same 2011 AWP conference included artists. Considering these forms only briefly, poetry drama looks like? Are we asking the some fascinating women’s collaborations as represented in anthologies like Plays from right questions? Are we defining ourselves into a between poetry and performance arts—poetry the Boom Box Galaxy (ed., Kim Euell with corner? Are we trying to confect/resurrect a verse and dance, poetry and theater, music and art Robert Alexander) or Say Word! Voices from Hip drama that is less than it could be for writers, and poetry—including a clip from the staging Hop Theater (ed., Daniel Banks), opens up a performers, and audiences, at the same time of Patricia Smith’s Blood Dazzler. An inquiry range of new language and new approaches that we fail to recognize the verse drama that is to the Women’s Poetry Listserv produced a to poetry dramas: from the agile mix of happening already, in other places and spaces, in wealth of leads on women currently working rap, rhymed poetry, and remixed/sampled other forms, and by other measures? in hybrid poetry/performance forms, from Shakespeare (Deep Azure, Derek Boseman), to experimental to, well, experimental— plays that include prose, DJs, and MCs who Shakespeare himself didn’t write exclusively jazz operas, choreopoems, one-woman rap (Kristoffer Diaz’s Welcome to Arroyo’s), to in blank verse. In the same play, he might performance pieces (e.g., Anne Carson’s choreopoems and solo performance poetry incorporate rhymed tetrameter quatrains, prose, “Lots of Guns: An Oratorio for Five Voices” pieces in the tradition of Shange and others. rhymed iambic pentameter, even sonnets, and, of in Decreation; Heather Raffo’s Nine Parts of The amount and use of poetry varies, and the course, songs and dance. His iambic pentameter, Desire; Ntozake Shange, of course, whose aesthetics are often very different than those of for that matter, includes an enormous amount ground-breaking for colored girls who have “literary” verse drama, but these are compelling of complex variation. The dramatic reasons for considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf pieces written by well-educated, well-trained doing so—from keeping the reader awake, to created the choreopoem; Virginia Grise’s poets/performers making deliberate and characterization, have been widely written about, recent, award-winning Blu; Caridad Svich; considered choices. Commercial productions, but are often simplified, even by very educated Lois Roma-Deeley’s High Notes; Wendy from Broadway shows to new takes on classic critics. The prose/blank-verse dichotomy, for Brown-Baez; Karren L. Alenier; Sharon verse, like the Q Brothers’ Funk It Up About instance, isn’t simplistically about differentiating Bridgforth’s Theatrical Jazz; and some of the Nothin’ (2011) at the Chicago Shakespeare low and high characters, a common assertion, authors who appear in this issue of VW). Theatre, bring a probably more palatable but also about marking departures from Rather than writing iambic-pentameter verse version of this kind of poetic drama to an particular states of mind within the same plays, these women seem more inclined to older, whiter, wealthier audience, but raise character’s speech (e.g., Hamlet, Prince Hal), include a little of this, a little of that, including questions about commodification, co-option, —Ellen McLaughlin (2009) and sometimes different interactions between the blank verse, into their poetry drama. and dilution of the form, if it is the same form. same pair of characters, and sometimes madness, and sometimes business communications, and The story among multi-ethnic writers—and We turn from a description of contemporary sometimes turning points in action and thought there are many—who write poetry drama is, verse drama to its purpose: What does drama (Richard DiPrima, The Actor’s (and Intelligent not surprisingly, also complex. Verse plays by offer poetry? Do we even need verse drama? Reader’s) Guide to the Language of Shakespeare, well-established African American authors, What is it about Shakespearian drama—or any The Young Shakespeare Players, 2010). When like Smith (Blood Dazzler), Rita Dove (The good dramatic verse—that is so compelling? contemporary critics and writers consider the Darker Face of the Earth), Derek Walcott Historically, verse drama has existed in verse drama, the very form they want to revive is (most recently, Moon-Child, a rhyming verse situations where drama required portability. one they have a flattened understanding of. drama), Toni Morrison (Desdemona), Yusef In Elizabethan theater, there were no sets, Komunyakaa (Gilgamesh), are literary and no lights, and only minimal contemporary Would Shakespeare, alive today and writing well-crafted, at the same time that they’re costumes. They staked everything on thewords contemporary verse drama, insist on writing intended for performance. We imagine there and the actors. Without spectacular images or either in Elizabethan language or using only might also be dynamic verse plays coming effects, what did Shakespeare have that made the tools available to an Elizabethan poet and from younger fellows of Cave Canem, him one of the most popular writers of his playwright? We very much doubt it, although which supports African-American poets and generation? Words. And because there were the subjects he wrote about then, the sentiments encourages a deep knowledge of traditional no extras in his productions—no flashing he expressed about many of them, his techniques verse forms—Komunyakaa, Dove, and lights, no explosions—he had to decorate his for constructing a drama and for holding an Smith have all been teachers there, and co- stories using verse. In doing that he engages VerseWISCONSIN.org 5 the audience more than is possible in any other But if we’re looking to engage and to increase the that blank verse is unavailable to contemporary form of entertainment. Shakespeare’s verse, and audience, then we need to think about how to poet-playwrights? A resounding no! Metered any good dramatic poetry, subconsciously engages perform more effectively. That’s one of the things verse, iambic or not, rhymed or not, is one poetic the imagination. (Neurological research around drama might offer poetry. tool that contemporary poet dramatists would do this topic has been in the news a good deal well to master and to consider using sometimes— recently; Philip Davis’s Shakespeare Thinking is Other contributions include collaboration, voice either as a way to write an entire drama, or as a one recent book.) Compelling words enter our production, gesture, facial and vocal expression, way to write particular characters/voices, or as a brains, where we see images: “But look, the morn, performance that occurs after rehearsal, a means to mark a departure from the ordinary or in russet mantle clad/walks o’er the dew of yond deepened understanding of audience, timing, for some other dramatic purpose in a play. The high-eastward hill.” That’s an image of dawn that and the creation, even in a one-person show, of flat language of much contemporary drama (and we’ll remember much better than colored lights other voices/personae. David Yezzi’s essay “The poetry, for that matter) could benefit from a more illuminating a backdrop. And Shakespeare is, of Dramatic Element” (newcriterion.com), provides eclectic, and riskier, aesthetic. And be one way to course, not just using visual imagery, but sound, a good discussion of the techniques even “lyric” differentiate poetry drama from the movies and rhythm, repetition, and other poetic tools, in poets with no interest in the stage have borrowed build an audience for poetry and theater. nuanced combination for his effects: “In sooth, I and should continue to borrow from dramatists: know not why I am so sad:/It wearies me; you say character, voice, and dialogue or talk, which more When was the last time we went to the theater? When it wearies you.” In the simplicity of this statement, poets would do well to pay more attention to. was the last time we saw a verse drama? When did in the sighing through the s- sounds, and the Maxwell, a poet-playwright, has this to say about we last see a verse play by a living writer? Between repetition of weary and you, who doesn’t instantly what drama offers poetry: the two of us, we go to a lot of readings and a lot get an impression of this character’s state of mind? of performances. And a lot of the performances Above all it has actors, who understand we attend are verse dramas, old and new. Of the No literature is as potent as the imagination itself. rhythm, coherence, balance, breath. Breath is many productions that we attended in 2011, A good playwright’s job is to suggest a story, the key to everything. A poem that doesn’t the most satisfying piece—prose or verse—was and a good actor’s job is to suggest a character. acknowledge the limitations and strictures most definitely a contemporary poetry drama, of the breath will fail because it is failing to But the audience must be free to fill in other make a human sound (where human can be An Illiad, at The Court Theatre in Chicago. elements with imagination. This is exactly what both adjective and noun, sound both noun Adapted from Homer by Lisa Peterson and Denis makes verse drama so ideal. It combines the and verb). Most new poetry is unmemorable O’Hare, An Illiad is a one-person show in which most suggestive language—poetry—with the not because it’s obscure, or self-absorbed, or the writers and performer brought the poetic text most suggestive form of communication—live trivial—terrific poems can be written in all to life, with polyphonic, chaotic, and sometimes speech and movement by a group of actors or an those ways—but because most young poets discordant elements that include Homer’s individual actor—and shares it with an actively have lost their sense of human sound. Or verse—in Greek and in translation, sound poetry, imagining audience. Verse drama’s unique they know what it is, but can’t write the shape list and litany, stand-up comedy, performance power to engage groups of people has been of it. All the wit and learning in the world poetry, and echoes of the play’s origin in improv, can’t compensate for an inability to render understood for thousands of years. We believe, persuasively the distinct voice of an actual among others: in other words, a contemporary as playwright/actor Ellen McLaughlin argues breathing person. poetic idiom, asking contemporary and eternal in a 2009 commencement address, “Theatre questions about war and gender, among others. and Democracy” (fluxtheatre.org), that the co- And what does poetry do for drama? Poetry An Illiad unites contemporary and ancient poetry founding of Greek theater and democracy is focuses on language. Not only its sounds, but its and drama, which comes, after all, from the no coincidence. Democracy depends on active, images, rhythms, diction, meanings, metaphors. Greek word meaning to do, to act. engaged citizens, who fill in the story behind It has the capacity to take the black and white, a politician’s speech. Little wonder that our flattened prose of contemporary speech, and What’s in a name? Poetry drama, verse play, democracy can be so passive—how can a public make it colorful and three-dimensional. It dramatic poetry, closet drama, choreopoem, educated on bad television ever develop the can focus attention on the hyperbole of the Spoken Word, Hip Hop Theater, Poets/Poetry engagement necessary to vote? Verse drama isn’t marketing world, the lies of politics and the Theater/Theatre, dramatic monologue…Oh, just important because Shakespeare did it. Poetry part-truths of journalism, and invite scrutiny. It what the heck? This is Verse Wisconsin. Can’t we is drama’s native language. Performance is poetry’s requires our attention. It fires our imaginations, give the whole amazing range of possibilities, on native state. or to use a 21st century metaphor, our synapses. occasion, an umbrella term, with the knowledge It provides a mode, non-visual, where theater that what verse and drama means has changed Besides our broad and deeply held belief in the has it all over movies. Instead of seeing more since 1600, and will continue to change, power of poetry and drama, singly and in unison, productions that employ cinematic effects, we though what was wonderful then, poetically and to activate the imagination and to help us to make prefer theater that opposes passive “viewing” and dramatically, is still available? Let the practice of meaning, a belief also critical to Hip Hop, there engages the active participation of its audience 21st century verse drama be about appreciating are a host of practical, artistic contributions that through surprising, and sometimes challenging, different forms of each and different aesthetics; drama can make to poetry. The contemporary language. Verse drama doesn’t insist on a political about learning/discerning what poetry and drama poetry reading emerges largely out of its use or social purpose, but it carries one, naturally, can still offer each other, as well as their audience; about transcending Any production that captures the energy and feeling and drive of this hip-hop generation, its issues and concerns, its larger false divides cultural aesthetic, is hip-hop theater. And hip-hop theater is more than just what is on the stage; it’s who’s in the audience between high and as well. A theater work can have all the beats and rhymes and slick moves it wants, but if the production excludes the hip- low, page and stage, elite and folk, us hop community from the audience, it loses a valuable synergy. The interaction between the performer and the audience is a and them; about crucial element of the work.—Holly Bass, “Can You Rock It Like This?” (2004) bringing what was once whole among Beat poets, as do the beginnings of both by requiring its audiences to be present and together again; about remembering that poetry, performance poetry. It may have been fresh air engaged, and by creating a product that, with like the world, isn’t flat, and that the dramaverse, in the poetry room at one point, but let’s confess: just a few exceptions, is pretty much designed if not infinite, is at least bigger than we thought aren’t we all feeling a bit weary of poets in single- and guaranteed to be, whatever the size of its it was. file, ourselves included, reciting our work out audience, noncommercial. loud to small groups of fellow poets, whether or More information about the sources of this article not we have performance competence? If it helps Is “who is writing contemporary (Shakespearean is available online, as are links, including some our writing to hear the poem read aloud, fine: blank) verse drama?” or “why isn’t there more maybe we should do that more within the context (Shakespearean blank) verse drama?” the right video. of a writing group than a public performance. question? We don’t believe it is. Does that mean 6 Verse wisconsin #108 April 2012 Excerpt from Guarding Lincoln— A Verse Play in Five Acts by Amit Majmudar The Scene is one man’s memory throughout, ABRAHAM LINCOLN MARY WELLS pulling walls and props into configuration, A few characteristic touches (beard, hat) should Comic actress in Our American Cousin. holding them there and letting them go. (In be enough to indicate his identity; he and Hill some ways this play, for all its characters and should be the two tallest people in the cast. EVE GERMON activity, is a one-man show.) Accordingly, Comic actress in Our American Cousin. many events are telescoped, expanded, spliced, MARY TODD LINCOLN or juxtaposed as if chronologically successive Round, with an aggressive voice. EDWIN STANTON, SECRETARY OF WAR when historically they may have occurred Bespectacled, small in stature; little-dictatorish; weeks, months, even years apart. There needn’t JOHN WILKES BOOTH a nasal but commanding voice. be great effort at keeping the transitions Handsome, slender, catlike in his movements. imperceptible; they must not be loud, however, PETERSEN simply because Hill is often speaking through GEORGE ATZERODT Owner of Petersen House, where Lincoln died. them. The lighting has a role in signaling Scruffy and dirty; a German accent, but not the end of a remembered sequence and in overdone. GENERAL AUGUR emphasizing or de-emphasizing a region of the Commandant of the Department of Washington. stage; its role is detailed in the course of the JOHN BUCKINGHAM play, second in significance only to Hill’s. I have Ticket-taker at Ford’s Theater. JUSTICE CARTER divided the play into Acts and Scenes simply for Older than Augur. convenience of reference. Continuity should be JOHNNY PEANUT emphasized in performance, and I have made Late adolescence, a little slow. ROBERT LINCOLN this continuity explicit in the stage directions. Lincoln’s young son. Except for the Petersen House and State Box JOHN PARKER scenes, the stage should have the minimum Lincoln’s substitute bodyguard the night of the GIDEON WELLES amount of scenery necessary to suggest the assassination; well-groomed, but two details Secretary of the Navy. location. of his uniform must be off: his shirt should be tucked asymmetrically, and he must have his SENATOR CHARLES SUMNER The Time: Hill, the narrator/Chorus, badge on at a slight angle. Should look very patrician. reminisces an unspecified number of years after the events. Most of the play’s action takes MISS LAURA KEENE YOUNG LAWYERS; CROWDMEMBERS; place around the time of Lincoln’s assassination A famous actress. SOLDIERS; 6 WITNESSES to the assassination. (April 14th-15th, 1865), beginning in Act I Scene ii at 9 p.m. of the 14th, but the action MISS CLARA HARRIS ACT I. fluctuates widely in time and space. A family friend of the Lincolns. Scene 1 (Prologue). Bare stage. Ward Hill Lamon The Stage is the present-day Ford’s Theater, FORBES enters and addresses the audience. with the façade of a decorated State Box The President’s valet. overlooking the stage on the right. WARD HILL LAMON. BURNS You’d hoped for Mr. Stanton, I suspect. Cast of Characters. Casting and costumes The President’s coachman. Or Dr. Leale, who kept that night’s crimson cuffs will benefit from the easily accessible historical In a brass case—reliquary for the blood. photographs of several characters in the play, STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS Well, either could have told this story, both including Ward Hill Lamon himself. Where Short. Better than me, I bet. I never dug the appearance or overall demeanor of the The slug out with my naked fingers, never character is not of great importance, I have CLARK MILLS Twisted a porcelain probe in the wound. given an indication of their role instead of a An artist who made Lincoln’s life-mask. I wasn’t there saluting when his spirit description. Raced up the sky the morning of the 15th. DR. CHARLES LEALE It wasn’t his no more, that spirit. Wasn’t WARD HILL LAMON A 23-year-old doctor. Even America’s. ‘Now he belongs to the ages.’ Lincoln’s personal friend and bodyguard; called “Hill” by the President, and hence by the play; DR. TAFT Maybe. But these my memories belong a huge man, with drinker’s eyes and a faint An older doctor. To me, and me you’ve got, full fourteen stone, Southern accent. Atrociously sober on a Saturday night. HARRY HAWK I’ll tell my memories, as my host requests me. Comic actor in Our American Cousin. Believe me, though, if Lamon had his druthers, VerseWISCONSIN.org 7 He’d sooner douse these memories with whiskey Where you’re supposed to be? FORBES. Than floodlight a stage with their embers.... God damn it, man, why haven’t Five years this Union interlocked its fingers. You been keeping your pistols oiled Abraham, Father of the Tribes. And both hands free? BURNS. The white tribe, the black tribe, [Hill straightens and addresses the Five years. One hand trying to break the other. The blue tribe, the gray tribe. audience again.] Clashing colors, clashing dyes. FORBES. Father, too, of all the cottonmouths, He wasn’t assigned to wander off downstairs Say, were they really what they said they were? Massasaugas, rattlesnakes, And guffaw with his fellow Americans. A people? Did we keep a thing alive? Sidewinders, and Copperheads A pleasant evening at the theater! That vied to strike his heel. [Recorded laughter again, Parker BURNS. enjoying himself.] Or kill a thing that wasn’t born yet? Personal bodyguard, personal friend Of President Abraham Lincoln, I That silly bumpkin—Asa! Took the will FORBES. Am Ward Hill Lamon. Friend: always. That named him heir to his uncle’s millions Elegies Guard: always—save the night he needed saving. And used it to light a cigar! Come easy, after Appommatox. Truth is, [He looks down at Parker again.] I wished ’em hellfire just a week ago. And that— [Hill points into the audience, to a seat at How could anyone be so stupid? BURNS. the far right aisle, causing a spotlight to [Recorded laughter again, Parker You see the prisoners they marched through here? come on over John Parker, who watches enjoying himself. Hill is pretty much Five hundred of them nearabouts I saw. the stage. At the recorded sound of a on top of him by now. As if made theater, laughing, John Parker laughs, uncomfortable by Hill’s glower (which FORBES. oblivious to Hill pointing at him or the he remains oblivious to), he looks They came on up this road here, skygray jackets. spotlight on him.] around furtively, checks his fob watch Balconies, doorways, storefronts, lawns again; then gets up and heads up the aisle Watched them shuffle on. Untucked, unkempt, Scene 2. The Performance of Our American and out of the theater. Hill addresses the Uncountried. Soaked gauze on a stub knee, Cousin, Good Friday, April 14th, 1865. audience.] The medic’s bullet still between the teeth. Approximately 9:45 pm. The stage remains bare [During Forbes’s lines, enter Parker out until Hill steps off it, and Scene 3 starts being Time enough to get a drink in? Sure. of Ford’s Theater. He approaches Burns set up. No one will know. Thirsty, thirsty, sneak out and Forbes.] Real quick, then back here for HILL. The final act. Ain’t there a bar next door? BURNS. —is John Parker. [Hill follows Parker out of the theater Not interested in the play there, John? The play he’s watching:Our American Cousin. while the lights come on onstage.] Is it funny the third time around, John? PARKER. [Louder laughter overhead; John Parker Scene 3. Outside Ford’s Theater. Two facades, Play’s fine. I’m just a tad more interested, laughs, stretches, takes out a fob watch Ford’s Theater and Taltavul’s Tavern. Burns, That’s all, in a drink. and puts it back. Hill shakes his head.] slouching in the driver’s seat of President’s carriage; You talking bout those rebel prisoners Forbes, standing on the ground by him. They marched up Constitution Avenue? John Parker…let me guess: Never heard of him? [Hill walks menacingly and slowly across FORBES. FORBES. the stage and down the steps toward You ever see a battle? Not a soul jeered, here to F Street. John Parker. His voice has accusation in it and grief. Parker remains oblivious to BURNS. BURNS. him, periodically laughing or giggling Not a battle. Just You see them, John Parker? with the recorded laughter overhead.] A battlefield, afterward. Shiloh. I recall Raindrops testing a crushed snare drum. PARKER. John Parker was assigned We whooped the bastards, we did. To guard the President at Ford’s FORBES. If I’d a been there, I’d a spit. Theater that April night, Funeral taps. The dead don’t rise and march. To catch the hole, flecked bright BURNS. With fresh wood, bored BURNS. It wasn’t like that. Didn’t even feel In the State Box door Confederate banner surrendered its orange to Like victory, not in front of them at least. And the dark eye sundown. Blinking behind it. FORBES. [Hill crouches so he’s level with John FORBES. Just bodies on the ground. Parker.] No constellation for its stars. No consolation. BURNS. Why ain’t you up there, Parker, BURNS. Just losses all around. With your face to the corridor The sky must be darker this evening in Richmond. 8 Verse wisconsin #108 April 2012 FORBES. A detail here? If I indulge my heart BUCKINGHAM. No way to hate them, once you saw them. And down a shotglass full of wish-I-had, Antony’s speech designs to choke us up, Wink at the barman, But the way you delivered your lines, Mr. Booth, PARKER. Tell him to put it on history’s tab? We were rooting for Brutus Hmph. Ask the Union boys they fired on. [Hill pauses.] And booing the fellow who followed you.

BURNS. No way to shoot a bullet through time past. BOOTH. The President speaks of the South as a house [Booth begins to whistle and turns to Brutus hated tyranny. What you heard Hurricane-hit he’s eager to rebuild. enter Ford’s Theater. Hill puts his pistol Were the Bard’s words, to be sure, but my own heart. away and exits.] PARKER. BUCKINGHAM. There’s money to be made down South, there is. Scene 4. The Lobby of Ford’s Theater. John Your style’s your own, too, what with the way The manors Sherman kicks to bric-a-brac Buckingham, the ticket-taker, reading a book. He you leap, Have got to be stacked up again, you know, holds out his hand without looking. Your lines shot forth so high, you’re carried airborne. Factories, foundries. Labor’s plentiful What with the freed slaves rubbin’ at their wrists BUCKINGHAM. BOOTH. And wondering what it is to own two hands. Ticket please. The play’s already started, though. That is what my critics have called me, you know— The “Gymnastic Actor.” BURNS. BOOTH (tilting up his stovepipe hat). You plan to pack a carpetbag, John Parker? “You don’t need a ticket from me, do you?” BUCKINGHAM. Your fight scenes make you seem a real swordsman, PARKER. BUCKINGHAM. Like you indulge the actor across from you. And leave this beauty of a job I’ve got? Why, Mr. Booth! I did not recognize you! When you were Roderick in The Marble Heart— Where else can a guy cop a malt at Taltavul’s, Now when’d that one come out? Three years ago? On the clock no less, and see BOOTH. Miss Laura Keene perform for free? You care much for the comedy, Mr. Buckingham? BOOTH. The Marble Heart. You know I debuted Roderick BURNS (grinning). BUCKINGHAM. Before the President himself, in that one. Hear, hear. It’s a good one. Our American Cousin. That night the fellow opposite me fell Been running off and on five years this June. Into the pit when I lunged at him first PARKER. Earlier than we rehearsed. “Would you care for a little ale?” BOOTH. You know it line for line by now, I bet. BUCKINGHAM. FORBES (glancing at Burns, shrugging). Will we be seeing you onstage again? Sounds good. BUCKINGHAM. [Exeunt into Taltavul’s Tavern. Re-enter Ain’t no way could I say those lines like you. BOOTH (walking past him). Hill.] Tonight, sir, shall be my finest performance. BOOTH. HILL. So what’s your favorite line in the whole thing? BUCKINGHAM. He’ll come out soon—from the very door! Is that so? Are you in the play, Mr. Booth? Ale from the same tap brims him up with courage BUCKINGHAM. And empties out their minds. Did he scoot off Don’t s’pose I could think of one, just like that. BOOTH. His barstool when they came so they could sit A guest appearance, in the President’s honor. Three in a row, and bump their pints, and toast BOOTH. A walk-on—no. A leap-on part. The Union? Did he tip his hat? I acted in this play, in Richmond once. [John Wilkes Booth comes out of the bar I’ll tell you what my favorite line was: BUCKINGHAM. and looks up at the sky. As soon as he (affecting a caricatured, country-bumpkin Who as? Not Lord Dundreary’s butler? leaves it, the spotlights focus on the two voice) actors, the façade of the scene is rolled “Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside BOOTH (finger to his lips, winking). away and the stage starts being reset into out, old gal—you sockdologizing old man-trap!” Don’t tell, but I’m the God in the machine. the next scene (see below). Booth takes [Buckingham bursts out laughing.] Brief role, but long enough to end the scene. out his Derringer discreetly and slips it [Exit Booth into the theater.] back. He checks his knife as well.] BUCKINGHAM. Low comedy, high tragedy, how do you do it? End of Act 1. These all are moments I was never there for— Now here you are a better Asa Trenchard But God, I can imagine—he’s so close— Than Mr. Harry Hawk himself—when just [Hill takes out a pistol of his own and Last January, I saw you as Brutus. points it at the oblivious Booth. Hill looks at the audience.] BOOTH (smile fading). I see myself as Brutus this month and ever after. You wouldn’t mind it, would you, if I change VerseWISCONSIN.org 9 about writing II

to catch just once the light of grace precisely winter despair, 2011 the cardinal’s scarlet body below zero for days scintillant the constant bite of the winds in late March these indifferent soulless times when he serenades his lover although the goldfinches frolicking parades along branches in the woods still thick with snow rain-shined black do not seem to believe leaps into the blue pour of air that there is much amiss

—Robert Schuler, Menomonie, WI —Robert Schuler, Menomonie, WI

Spring

At the pond’s bright edge, After Another Spring Snow One rock slips off another. Good morning, turtle! She waxes brave, leaves the dry heated air and shabby furniture —Caroline Collins, Quincy, IL to trespass the farm fields. Acres of stalk-pocked dirt soothe her undiagnosed craving to eat earth. She clicks into narrow skis, leans into the bloated sky, Harvesting Forgiveness pushes across still frozen pastel acres. She searches for danger, That first post-wedding spring, certain each box elder border they started with a raised bed garden. will reveal coyotes that yip and howl Those first few years each meal through crescent moon nights. was somehow victorious. But the coyotes stand her up. Salads from red-skinned potatoes, They wait for the dark, cucumbers, fragrant with dill. pre-dawn, pre-Darwin They devoured French beans, to clear the barbed wire blanched a perfect green, then feast on the Shetland lambs roasted peppers, red, yellow, tangerine still rooting to let down April’s cruel milk. each color a sweet fire for their tongues. They thrived. An organic hysteria overtaking them— —Jenna Rindo, Pickett, WI their lust for each other pink and wet as melon flesh, filled with the small dark seeds of quarrels and regret they learned to either spit out or swallow.

—Jenna Rindo, Pickett, WI

10 Verse wisconsin #108 April 2012 Some Signs Spring Pique The winter-bleached and matted grass has its chlorophyll hue drained. Wind a dervish, Walt Whitman’s faith in its leaves wind that growls and shrieks must sustain me as I await tardy spring. through screens in open windows.

Some snow returns between thaws Why, when spring arrives and musty ground is spongy must all be blasted as is the tender, upturned ground to neighboring planets of my father’s and brother’s and beyond by a frigid, graves, one next to the other, huffing gale? only two months apart. When I’m out Family adieus at grave sites were in woolens must I be both snow-filled as are scenes, pelted with last fall’s floating with snow in a shaken leaves and insect cadavers? globe at holidays. When my dear wife Spring has promises stands open-mouthed, that the roots are generating hands as megaphone, red- from the loam, new green faced and stamping, can I not and hardy grass fragrance, know what this pantomime means? some signs for me of Easter’s promise. When I long to feel a bright sun perched upon barren oaks, —Michael Belongie, Beaver Dam, WI must my eyes water and sting as though slapped by a rude parent?

When my little ones ruse 5. want outdoor play to skirt daddy’s foolish wrath, must let us gather points of sacrifice they be lashed to trees, rather than marbles in the lot of spring. wailing directives to one another each word that dropped was badly scuffed in their games? & the rain ended by a fence, being one of those personal summer showers booked for t.v. When I kiss each lovely wild flowers in bunches jumped up; good-night and retreat their pale bodies swept along in laughter to my loft, must I pray then a barrage of words ended the flow. that all will awake rooted memorial day was in the frying pan and upright, including my house & flowers were piled high. and the beleaguered trees? the once grand nation sat in its backyard of grave stones with words Why, does spring not arrive that regurgitated & caught shy, decorous, that I may, both cusp & curd. each year, revel in her greens and buds, as the last shaded snow melts —Guy R. Beining, Great Barrington, MA and the sun leers high in hot heaven?

—G.A. Saindon, Seymour, WI

VerseWISCONSIN.org 11 Excerpt from The Gardener’s Wife—a play in free verse by Charlotte Mandel CAST OF CHARACTERS: EVE, ADAM, EVE EVE LILITH, CAIN, ABEL. Amputate, uproot and dig. So ends You see me as a fixture of this house— PLACE: The house that ADAM builds; the my window world. (Throws up her hands) like the door frame, kitchen wainscoting, garden he designs and plants. These keys bench fitted into the bay window. TIME: Continuing die without the woodpecker tapping rhythm! CURTAIN: A scrim depicting clear noonday sky, (Looks towards her husband) Adam, didn’t I have ADAM white clouds floating on blue. Morning calls of equal right to the grove? I built every part of this house with my own hands. songbirds, rustling leaves. The pastoral medley (She gets up and goes out to the patio speaking And I made it to your measure. gradually gives way to the whining drone of a directly towards him) (He takes a few steps towards her, opens his arms handheld chainsaw. (Directions signify stage Didn’t I? Didn’t I have a right to those trees? and outlines her form with his hands, not quite left and stage right.) As light comes up, we see touching) through the scrim. Stage area is divided in two: ADAM I am always seeing you for the first time. At right, the house, interior exposed, white airy, abstract open framework. At left, the outdoors—a (speaking to himself as much as to his wife) naturalistic garden, but gashed by raw stumps No flowers—this is to be a meditation garden— (Light fades to dark, bird songs are heard, light of morning of slender trees—pin oak, maple, scrub pine. rocks, water, fish. rises as they continue to stand facing one another. They Beyond, untouched woods, a green hill, a rock are young, in a sunfilled garden.) cliff. It is an afternoon in early spring. The EVE furnishings and landscape features are minimal, (to anyone who will listen) EVE suggested rather than actual. Scenes should be You know how birds get into disputes—those trills Are you my creator? able to shift like states of mind. Scrim rises. and chucks of the tongue have to do with nesting privilege, pride of place. Adam! ADAM EVE sits at a white table she uses as a desk; (he does not look up) If your name is Eve, I think you may be perfect. her fingers rest on the keys of a small portable Did you see the oriole this morning (points typewriter. Dressed in a comfortable pastel-colored down at a stump)— EVE shift dress, she will look to be anywhere from 20 on the stump of its nesting tree, scolding and Are you testing me? to 50 as the play shifts in time. Her body is strong, pecking physically sensual without self-consciousness. imaginary rivals out of habit. The cardinals stood ADAM Wide casement windows are open to her view, like figures to decorate a flower pot— No, I want to taste you. imaginary to the audience. She seems to stiffen scarlet cock, washed-out pink hen. (As he moves to kiss her, she puts her hand between and vibrate with each re-start of the chainsaw. their mouths.) ADAM The sound stops. ADAM appears at the far end The rock border will reflect onto gold and red carp. EVE of the garden. EVE begins to type speaking aloud They will appear to be swimming through Wait—there is a taste—I know words for this— without looking at him, his movements enacting her mountains. tongue, teeth, lips—I am a cup filled with words. ADAM moves to the center of the garden; Gazing at goldfish elicits mindfulness towards words—(touching him) he turns himself around as on the pinwheel of a the truth of ambiguity— barrier bone—pillow breast— watch, degree by degree, measuring the landscape (He stops her words quickly to kiss her. Slowly with his eyes, until he has turned full circle. EVE they taste the surprise of each other’s lips.) The oriole’s wings were yellow and black. EVE (Sniffing, blinking) ADAM (simultaneously typing/speaking ) The house is full of smoke—you’ve choked up Salt . . . sweet . . . As though you were the axis of the universe, the fireplace you stood in the center of our garden and turned with fresh-cut pine—resins are oozing and EVE full circle, measuring the landscape. dripping onto the grate. Sweat—your sweat is cool, then the heat of My eyes are burning. your skin— ADAM how hard fits to soft—Oh—I think we may (kneels and begins to hammer a stake into the ground) ADAM both be perfect. —to see orange and gold flames underwater. (They fully embrace, young, ardent, hands and EVE lips eager) (typing) EVE Satisfied, you knelt, and hammered a stake (looking directly at her husband) into the ground. You are all that I see. ADAM This shady oval of grass was our first bed. ADAM ADAM The edge of the pond will begin here. (pause—he pays attention to her now) EVE Eve, sometimes I have trouble finding you. The orchard blossoms were falling in their first season. 12 Verse wisconsin #108 April 2012 ADAM ADAM LILITH The same fragrance of grapes almost about to stealing power from the air! I am a first draft. You’re a revised version, Eve— sour on the vine. (They race off, triumphant, to right. Light more adaptable to wifehood. Nor is Adam darkens, then brightens. LILITH enters the first draft of a man. Before Adam, Creator EVE downstage, left, looking all about her. She checks attempted a man with wings and boringly sweet I patted a snake, loved its copper and green out the varieties of plantings ADAM has set.) disposition. That angel couldn’t—or wouldn’t in the sun, stay grounded — head lifted, its little forked tongue moving LILITH Useless for digging in gardens. Creator uses him in and out, Ah ha—his garden is a scale model of the like a trained pigeon, to carry messages. tuned to every vibration of my thighs. other one. That man never had an original thought in EVE (Stage darkens, then flashes of lightning reveal his head. Do you want to come into the house? them downstage running across left to right. (Cataloging) Hibiscus, Pumpkin facing south, to Do you want me to call Adam? BLACKOUT) the west Blackberry, Lilac Chase—my favorite late bloomer, LILITH (Daylight, laughing together after making food for bees when Thyme turns to seed. Yes, I’ll come into your house. No, don’t call love.) (ADAM is seen in the distance, working a far him— corner of the field.) I’d only be invisible. Your husband (sings, EVE ironically) Not expelled—we escaped. You EVE’S VOICE “only has eyes for you.” There’s an example never wanted to be anybody’s hireling. Adam, is that you? of Creator’s own hubris—to implant monogamous ideal ADAM EVE (pregnant, near term, comes through into a free-willed sexual being. It was a world without sting or venom, or the house, stands at the doorway. Her arms (Changing tone from ironic to serious, she looks ambiguity. reach out with possibility at the sight of directly into EVE’s eyes) another woman in the world, then, in terror, Yet, for you and Adam, I think it works. EVE wrap around her belly as though to protect her His garden was a pose, like pictures in a mail unborn child.) EVE order catalog. What are you—sometimes I dream—are You were the first wife—are you my mother? you real? ADAM LILITH Our function was to complete a pattern of LILITH (Laughs) We’re born of the same ingredients, conceptual art. Touch me — my name is Lilith. Didn’t either dear Eve—of earth and salt water. Creator We pleased him like colorful birds hatched of your creators ever speak of me? squashed inside an aviary — and patted us out of the same body of mud. open to the blue sky but heads wary under a dome EVE In this story, Adam keeps his rib. of invisible wire. Creator tossed us into play The one before me? Discarded for being imperfect? (EVE looks distressed. LILITH, sensitive to her like pieces on a board game. distress, caresses her face) LILITH I think we are both perfect. EVE My dear, we are both perfect-ly over-intelligent. Adam, you and I were the only pegs on that board They tried to confine me within a wall of (EVE’s arms are wrapped around her belly as worth the risk of free will. brambles, though trying to contain it.) you know, like Sleeping Beauty? (EVE shakes ADAM her head) — EVE Like pepper dashed into the season. Creator’s a story, Eve, that you will write. Lilith — own hubris. Why stipple our tongues with alphabet if EVE LILITH only to spell I do like to write stories, but— Yes — ? words of congratulation? LILITH EVE EVE But I hoisted myself over the wall. I’m a There is something inside—here—(hands The letters we spit back spelled HUMAN! born acrobat. on her pregnancy)

ADAM EVE LILITH “Banishment—exile”—paper words singed In Adam’s story, you give birth to demons! Yes—? by his own lightning. Fire ate a road to freedom. We ran with LILITH EVE outstretched arms— Our children will be cousins, Eve, you’ll see— It’s alive. (They gesture acting out their words) demonic is child of human. LILITH EVE EVE Yes. revolving like blades of windmills — (She outlines Lilith’s form with her hands, not quite touching.) EVE Your form is like mine. You were first. It swells, grows, stretches until I ache— VerseWISCONSIN.org 13 LILITH the infant tightly to her chest for a moment Sunday Mass I know. before she gives it over to EVE. LILITH washes the baby as EVE admires in wonder. EVE The baby cries and cries.) We would swirl our garter belts It feels as though this living thing is a substance— around our hips, separately, boiling and seething—my belly’s become a EVE before church, and clip a sheer cauldron— It is a male, isn’t it? (laughing) Look, stocking on a thigh and hope as if all the angers of Creator are on fire it has a tiny erection! (To her infant, gazing it didn’t run, that it held up, inside me—here. into the newborn’s face) that a thigh wouldn’t ruin it Don’t make so much noise, tiny thing, by brimming over the top, LILITH please tell me why you’re wailing so. or let the silk pull the clip No, not all Creator’s anger—his supply is and make a hole. infinite— LILITH the more we scoop out, the more we add Hunger—sign of an active future. Open We would fast before communion. to the pot. your blouse, Eve— see—your nipple is leaking—let your baby’s Instead we would feed the birds EVE lips and tongue taste you. by throwing stale bread, hard I did not put this being into my belly of my (EVE nurses the infant. LILITH watches.) meatballs, or cut the rim down own free will. Forever so, the classic pose. on an ice cream carton, and leave a little vanilla. LILITH EVE You were part of the garden—a fertile part. (Speaking to the infant, absorbed in watching) We would make sure our coats Do you love Adam of your own free will? How utterly, totally helpless you are. were brushed, our hats not What is it like to be so helpless? cockeyed, our make-up not EVE I never had to suffer through a childhood. too much, our gloves were Do I? (To LILITH) Will it be painful to grow into in pairs, our words to a man? LILITH each other better words, You are the mother of what comes to life LILITH and sentences that didn’t inside you. Always. begin with You better...

EVE EVE We would always walk (falls to her knees) Oh, it kicked me again. What do I have to do? the same way, down four Lilith, long blocks that passed tell me how much more must it hurt? LILITH a dentist, Pinocchio’s cafe, I’ve seen animals— He will do it all—he inherits himself. and Laura’s Beauty Shop they lick off black blood and purple slime. all shut up faces and doorways (At that moment, ADAM, weary from his day’s littered with broken leaves (Out in the field, ADAM swings a heavy pick work in the field, approaches the house. LILITH and receipts. onto a boulder with a loud clang.) senses his approach and stands up to leave.)

LILITH EVE We would quicken our pace (Holding EVE, rocking) No—(looks up imploring)—stay with me. so that we could walk in early, I am your midwife, your healer, we are maybe unnoticed, sit in the middle, the two women of the world. Come, LILITH smell frankincense from let’s take you back into the house. You’ll see me again, dear sibling—I’ll be around the last mass, genuflect, a long time — like you. put down the kneelers. (Helps EVE enter the house. EVE’s labor (Bends and kisses EVE on the mouth, then slips begins. As LILITH guides her through the away through a back door of the house, not the We would see Helen and Mae birthing, ADAM continues to labor in the direction from which she came.) and Regina, my mother’s friends, field. The clanging of his pick on the rock who would nod and be happy accompanies the rhythms of EVE’s panting and ADAM stifled cries, the steady beat of LILITH’s voice (astonished and excited) Eve—let me see! that my mother had a daughter. chanting instructions.) They wanted to give us a lift. EVE But we never took one. We LILITH (Uncovers the infant and shows him its naked would stop at the deli to buy Ah now, pain is your river. little body.) hard rolls and donuts, Ah now, pain is the raft. Look, Adam, I, too, have created a man. carry them home, Ah now, little one, float—float — His name is CAIN. and eat them and eat them, Ah now, push— reading the funnies. visit VW Online for audio (“Ah-ah-ah-” a newborn’s cry slices through all ancy akacs ellington other sounds. LILITH crosses her arms to hold —N T , W , UT 14 Verse wisconsin #108 April 2012 Sharecroppin’

It took to forever, me sittin’ by that old well, pickin’ old paperback tiny blue flowers and onion grass stalks writing my name in the pasture next to the weevil-infested under dad’s cotton fields worked by her Pa.

—Michael Kriesel, Aniwa, WI Finally, forever later, she comes out. visit VW Online for more work by this author She stops, curls her toes, they’re goin’ up and back, up and back, inch-wormin’ her closer to that old well where I am. Sunday All of a sudden, After Sunday School, I was dispatched she throws a tiny blue flower to the Rexall Drugstore to pick up our and then we are both copy of the Milwaukee Sentinel, throwin’ tiny blue flowers of which, for me, only one section over and over again, back and forth, existed, the comics. Puck on the mast- back and forth; until we are standin’ head heralded amazements: The Phantom, on a tattered carpet of tiny blue flowers; , and Prince Valiant, Mandrake the Magician and she giggles and runs toward me and back; most especially Mac Raboy’s . Flash Gordon and I giggle and run toward her and back; A grey-haired woman removed from a and we are in a cascade of giggles; carefully laid row the paper with my and she runs ‘round back of her house; father’s name written in grease pencil. and I run ‘round back of her house; and we are breathless; Probably she looked forward to noon closing; and she calls, “Bossy, cumbossy! cumbossy!“ save for the taverns, a commercial and I call “come bossy, come bossy!“ silence settled over our little town’s and she hoists herself up, main street, as was the way in that world and she pulls me up, of mid-century. Over the streets and we are doublin’, a delicious lassitude lay—church- on her Ma’s skinny old cow; going over, time for a leisurely dinner or, season and weather permitting, a picnic and we are riding Bossy way out at the park, or a long nap or, in my beyond the onion-grass pasture, case, a good sprawl on the living room way over yonder, beyond where carpet with the funnies. It could be her Ma and Pa would catch us; and way beyond where heavenly if my father had someone to Mother and Father would catch us, relieve him tending bar at the bowling alley, and if my parents weren’t quarreling over to where we both get a whuppin’ money or other matters beyond my for somethin’ called going beyond bounds. understanding, that simple peace of rest from workaday efforts, of which I as yet —Barbara Lightner, Milwaukee, WI had no inkling, though I enthusiastically partook in observing that Sabbath I knew was in some way hallowed if only by the blossoming into color of what had stayed, all week, resolutely black and white.

—Thomas R. Smith, River Falls, WI

VerseWISCONSIN.org 15 Some New and Shining Place of Glory

When I go to some new and shining place of glory, persons I care about (or don’t care about) may peer down into my casket and think of things like how my lips look dry and chalky. Or the teeth behind those slightly parted lips appear too dull.

Although they used to gleam (one might recall). Yes, he had nice teeth (some might reaffirm). Though there were gaps an orthodontist could have fixed.

And it should be Spring. Late Spring when there are tulips, daffodils and warmer days. Rain for Rent No cold hands in Spring. North of Brainerd we pass a building that says “Rain for Rent,” nothing He hated winter, some may note but snow banks surrounding, no explanation. while gazing at my quiet hands Irrigation equipment comes to mind, that probably hold some rosary beads. but also various reasonably priced YES! HE HATED WINTER IN WISCONSIN! packages for theatrical rain: AND TO HIS LAST COOLING BREATH! Singin’ in the Rain requires downpour. grins Jerry’s guardian angel. King Lear rains horizontally and employs a wind machine.

And didn’t Jerry sometimes think that rosaries Cemeteries include rainy options were superstitious? in the price of burials. Novelists And Jerry didn’t believe in angels, either. rent drizzle for Noir inspiration, Did you know that? and party packages prove popular with lake house sets: And did you know he died a raving beggar? programmable confetti showers Could have left a million to the ones he loved. for birthdays and anniversaries, But ends up in a cheap gray coffin wearing with concluding cloud bursts, frayed and faded shirt cuffs. rainbows extra, for sending the perseverant away. And look. A tiny spider. And very still.

On the edge of his silk pillow. Rain is transient and can’t be sold. Catch it in gauges, barrels, bowls —Jerry Hauser, Green Bay, WI and it transforms immediately, losing something essential and definitive; rain exists through falling alone. As the sun sinks toward Winter Solstice, I sit in the backseat of a Jeep whose plates read “Ever After,” hands commandeering clouds, seeding their silver linings, precipitating summer and home.

—Sandy Lindow, Menomonie, WI

16 Verse wisconsin #108 April 2012 Letter from a Winter Retreat

With flurries forecast, every hour or so I stare out at the complement of trees on duty: solid-limbed, shouldered with snow The Knock that tumbles earthward in each passing breeze, mimicking a snowfall, till the air Death met his match stills and clears, the morning cold, but fair. at my father’s door today. He was welcomed as if an old friend. It’s beautiful and lonely. From the eaves icicles hang, gnarled as goblins’ fingers. You’re not afraid of me? Death asked Love can be winter weather: it deceives What a silly question, Dad’s response the slow and the naïve. Meanwhile, it ninjas as he put on a Beethoven symphony. into position to launch a sneak attack, flooring the wise before they can fight back, Most folks shudder when I come knocking their hands covering their faces. like a New Hampshire snowstorm—sudden, white I’ve lived a long time and am ready for you. erasure of vision. What one thought one knew I’ve had a good life. vanishes until the next day’s light reveals it subtly altered: I miss you I like that, Death said more than I thought I would, as if I’m lost I need to think on it some while walking home, the street signs rimed with frost. as he turned to leave. The roads are narrow trails of snow-plowed ice; no point trying to drive—my car would spin. —Jo Simons, Fitchburg, WI (Flurries, at last!) We’ve seen each other twice. I’ll close my eyes, breathe slow and then begin:

It’s cold out, but my cabin’s warm as June. Your Life on Google I think I love you. Come and see me soon.

I double-check the meaning of “arroyo” —Anna M. Evans, Hainesport, NJ and learn how the “yo” is really pronounced visit VW Online for audio by this author you, flooding with memories. Like the time I typed my own name and just like that a reed-thin dancer from Denmark swept her sinewy arms around me. Around both of us. The stuttering click-marks from her t-strap heels are still there, somewhere near my ankles. I type in “cankles” when no one is looking. As if something deep inside is swelling. If I forget how to pronounce “Jane Eyre” and cannot ask anyone, Miss Air reads my footwork, my ballroom stance when I stretch in my banana taffy office. I learn how to squeeze through opaque windows, how filing cabinets are really square-shaped universes, caches of student papers that will never be collected. Bring up Composition 2009. Or type “suede kitten heels.” Boolean search “professor clothes” and trace the thumbnail image of a woman tenderly, rhythmically undressing every letter of your name.

—Emilie Lindemann, Newton, WI visit VW Online for more work by this author

VerseWISCONSIN.org 17 Excerpt from Melvilliana—a dramatic monologue by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell

INTRODUCTION the Mighty Book that made us friends, A paradox and pleasure to find you here, [Angela seated at desk. General lighting.] beyond time, circumstance, and all reasonable grounded, for now, on the leeward shore, expectation. *OBSESSION: the Latin, OBSESSUS your own bones unmarked by any writing, From OBSIDERE, meaning “to besiege or beset” *OBSESSION: An idea or dominating feeling not one hieroglyph of what you’d hoped to be, Meaning “to trouble the mind” from which one cannot escape. no tattoo grafted from the savage thigh, It goes back a long time—my obsession with The headstone on Melville’s grave surprised no etching from the dead leg of Ahab. Moby Dick—to when I was a college student in me. I expected something monumental, an American Literature seminar. My professor, mythic, of Leviathan proportions. What I That you should leave us silent at the last himself obsessed as Ahab, quoted a character found was a modest slab of granite whose chief like the mad captain taken by the sea from Dickens: ‘I wants to make your flesh creep’ feature was a blank stone scroll upon which with all things Melvillian. not one word was carved. echoes and keeps your bitter promise, your life but a draught, unfinished and undone. And it worked. From him I learned how to This artistic oddity lodged itself in my mind, recognize great writing: like a grain of sand in an oyster shell, and I place on your stone among the offerings— It was strong & strange & dangerous to know. bothered me until I salved it with words of rocks and blossoms, mute things of this earth— It was the kind of thing, that once it HAD my own. The result was this poem, entitled you, would not let you go. “St. Melville,” and the poems that follow. a shell cleft clean by the constant tide, A series of conversations, celebrations and the song without words she sings and sings. And so I did the only thing I could—made interrogations—part tribute, part paean, part [Go left. End at Lower RIGHT.] my obsession my profession. I became a homage. Some focus on Melville and his Professor of Literature, with Melville as the writings; others are inspired by and obliquely 2. “St. Ishmael” central polestar in a swirling constellation of related to his art—a sort of repayment in shimmering planets and luminous moons, kind. A suite of songs meant to please and It may seem odd that I call Melville “a saint.” each of them bearing practical Yankee names: to trouble—a sequence of pearls on a string— But he is a saint, truly. For what is a saint if Hawthorne, Thoreau, Emerson, Dickinson, words born of obsession and meant to obsess. not a person who has lived an exemplary life? Whitman, Poe. A person who has devoted him- or herself *OBSESSION: A fixed idea around which the wholly to speaking the truth to the face of There was never any doubt that Melville world seems to be arranged. A kind of mania. falsehood? ruled, that Moby Dick was the Ur-Text upon which all the others were founded—Yes, [Center Stage] A person who is so gifted at his art that, surely, even the ones that had been written before he has been touched by the hand of God? THE WHALE breeched the waters and leapt 1. “St. Melville” from Melville’s imagination into America’s, in These are the qualifications for sainthood, November of 1851. St. Melville according to my Catechism. I have built my Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx own Cathedral and filled the empty niches For 20-odd years, I taught it in every with saints of all kinds, as you’ll soon see. They course—Summer, Fall, & Spring. I read it 60 “Wonderfullest things are ever the may not be canonized, but they are blessed unmentionable; times, lectured on it hundreds. I frightened beings, each in his own right, and worthy of deep memories yield no epitaphs.” thousands of students, even as I had once been our attention and admiration. frightened, by the Magnitude of Melville’s “The Lee Shore,”Moby Dick Work & World. Chief among the saints in Melville’s world is Is this what you were called to, still pilgrim, “Ishmael.” He is, after all, the hero of Moby to sleep beneath six small feet of earth? *OBSESSION: to dominate, after the manner Dick. He alone escapes the wreck and ruin of of an alien or evil spirit.To be possessed. the Pequod, even after he seems to have been A scroll unrolled across your headstone lost with the rest of the crew. Buoyed up by unengraved: the whiteness of the whale? Three years ago, I moved to the Bronx, only Queequeg’s coffin-turned-lifeboat & preserved to discover that my house was two miles from by Divine Providence from the sharks and Is this the dumb blankness full of meaning Woodlawn Cemetery and Melville’s grave. birds of prey, he is spared in order to tell the Ishmael fought and found at the end? He had followed me—stationary as he seemed tale. His survival is, practically, a miracle. to be, in his current state—or, rather I had Or is it pure chance, Queequeg’s oaken sword followed him, quite unconsciously. I tracked This poem, “St. Ishmael,” celebrates his struck blunt across the warped Loom of Time? him down on a pleasant Spring day and stood resurrection—not the one that happens at the in proximity of the hand that had penned end of the novel, but one that happens close to 18 Verse wisconsin #108 April 2012 the beginning. Ishmael gets a lesson in the he jumps ship, bequeathing his berth St. Lazarus dangers of his new profession in Chapter 48, to the next soul bound-and-gagged for glory: wherein he goes out in one of the whaleboats his will fresh-penned, “After the ceremony was concluded . . . I felt in the midst of a storm with the first-mate, stowed safe in his sea chest all the easier; a stone was rolled away from my Mr. Starbuck. The men barely make it back heart. Besides, all the days I should live would to the ship alive, reminding poor Ishmael of amid sharks’ teeth, hemp be as good as the days that Lazarus lived after his his mortality and compelling him to rewrite knots and close-carved bone— resurrection . . . .” –Ishmael, after surviving a and update his will. The epigraph to the one more Lazarus storm at sea & upon rewriting his will. “The poem is from Chapter 49. fresh from the tomb. Hyena,” Chapter 49, Moby Dick [Lower Right Stage. Seated on stool.] [Move towards Lower Left.] He knit him self up, a cable-stitch of skin. Pushed his left eye in its socket, then his right. St. Ishmael 3. “St. Lazarus” Cracked the knuckles in his fingers (now so thin!). Raised him self from the dirt and stood up right. “It may seem strange that of all men sailors Ishmael is a kind of Lazarus—a biblical should be tinkering with their last wills and figure who shows up in Melville’s writings Lazarus, Lazarus, don’t get dizzy. testaments, but there are no people in the world over and over again. And why not? Here more fond of that diversion. This was the fourth Lazarus, Lazarus, now get busy. is the only man we know of—besides Christ Mary’s weeping, Martha’s made a cake, time in my nautical life that I had done the himself—who died—stayed dead for days— same thing. After the ceremony was concluded Jesus is calling at the graveyard gate. and then came back to tell the tale. Along Your closest cousin, happy you are dead, . . . I felt all the easier; a stone was rolled away with the rest of us, Melville wondered what from my heart. Besides, all the days I should Eyes Martha’s sheep and Mary’s empty bed. it may have been like to enter the world of live would be as good as the days that Lazarus lived after his resurrection . . . .” –Ishmael, after the dead and then return to the land of the The chorus of voices sings him awake. surviving a storm at sea & upon rewriting his living. Surely, Lazarus, then, is one of our Once a body’s broken, it cannot break. will. “The Hyena,” Chapter 49,Moby Dick “saints,” an intercessory figure, who can He licks his lips and wags his muscled tongue. teach us something about how to live and Flexes each foot till the warm blood comes. We know what those days are like: how to die. Turns from the darkness and moves toward Girl-drinks in coconut shells the sun. shaded by those little umbrellas, This poem, “St. Lazarus,” imagines what A step. A shamble. A dead-out run. Mai Tais at the Tiki Bar of Eternity. those first moments of resurrection must have been like. “St. Melville” appeared previously in Christianity We see you sipping slowly— [Lower LEFT]3.75 x 5 ad_Layout 1 12/6/11 8:38 AM Page& Literature 1 and in Moving House; “St. Lazarus” in Christian Century and Saint Sinatra. after all, what’s the rush?— your hairy legs crossed at the knee, CELEBRATING 36 YEARS meditating on—what else?—the sea, your crazy days with Queequeg and the boys, PUSHCART PRIZE 2012 Ahab passing the flagon, AMERICA’S BEST FICTION, ESSAYS, MEMOIRS AND POETRY— the savages cheering him on, 67 BRILLIANT SELECTIONS FROM HUNDREDS OF PRESSES Starbuck—as ever—in a sour mood.

Squeezing sperm and burning blubber, you’d all become so close, as if you’d grown into one another, Kokovoko near as Rockaway.

Who’d have guessed your joy ride would end so badly?— all lost in the Whalewreck, the whirlpool of His wide white wake.

Orphan that you are, you’re not alone here in heaven, where there’s no last call, and every round is free.

They’re with you in the tale you tell to every traveler “A must-have for readers of contemporary literature.” who finds himself—surprised!— PUBLISHERS WEEKLY on the barstool next to Jesus, 569 PAGES I HARDBOUND $35.00 I PAPERBACK $18.95 you on his left, easing his passage PUSHCART PRESS I P.O. BOX 380 I WAINSCOTT, NEW YORK 11975 I from one life to another. ORDER FROM W.W. NORTON CO. 800 223-2584 A few drinks & many chapters later WWW.PUSHCARTPRIZE.COM (plus Epi-logue, Ex-tracts, Et-y-mo-lo-gy) VerseWISCONSIN.org 19 Dramatic Poetry and Fermat’s Last Theorem by Amit Majmudar I used to think Shakespeare poisoned the soil like a eucalyptus. Be garlanded, and lit, and furnish’d forth His leaves, medicinal, leeched something equal and opposite into For an especial banquet; at the hour the ground. The Tree of Life stands in a clearing. Creativity that Of midnight we will sup there; see nought wanting, dominant demands a sterile radius. We still stand in his. It’s the And bid the galley be prepared. There is way energy could be neither created nor destroyed after the God A cooling breeze which crisps the broad clear river: We will embark anon. Fair nymphs, who deign of Genesis switched off the generator. No great ascents to heaven To share the soft hours of Sardanapalus, in Christianity, after Dante; no great verse plays in English, after We’ll meet again in that the sweetest hour, Shakespeare. Call it the First Law of Succession. The First Law of When we shall gather like the stars above us, Succession is that there are no successors. And you will form a heaven as bright as theirs; Till then, let each be mistress of her time, Because it’s been done fairly well, elsewhere. Sometimes the And thou, my own Ionian Myrrha, choose, Shakespearean seedling will take root far afield. Aleksander Pushkin’s Will thou along with them or me? Boris Godunov, for example, or Schiller’s Wallenstein cycle—these poets derived, from Shakespeare’s history plays, a viable way of With neither of you, if that’s how you insist on talking. With presenting the histories of their own people. The young Victor Hugo Tennyson, over half a century on, the imitation actually gets worse. openly declared Shakespeare superior to Racine and the French Tennyson mimicked everything—both the blank verse and the neoclassical drama, producing some highly successful plays, like the occasional “low prose” passages you find in Shakespeare: contemporary sensation Hernani, in prose (a lesser Shakespearean Frenchman, who also wrote his plays in prose, was Alfred de Musset). Walter Map. Nay, my lord, take heart; for tho’ you suspended In other instances, a poet writes a verse play on a different model yourself, the Pope let you down again; and though you suspend entirely—Goethe’s Faust comes to mind. It might be argued that Foliot or another, the Pope will not leave them in suspense, for the Pope himself is in suspense, like Mahound’s coffin hung between Faust Part I has some precedent in the Shakespearean tragedies, but heaven and earth—always in suspense, like the scales, till the weight by Faust Part II, Goethe is presenting a quite idiosyncratic riff on of Germany or the gold of England brings one of them down to classical themes; but the farther away he goes from Shakespeare, the the dust—always in suspense, like the tail of the horologe—to and closer he gets to mere pageantry, the kind of court masque that Ben fro—tick-tack—we make the time, we keep the time, ay, and we Jonson and John Milton wrote, but Shakespeare never did. serve the time; for I have heard say that if you boxed the Pope’s ears with a purse, you might stagger him, but he would pocket the purse. Actually, Shakespeare seems to inspire artists outside English to outdo themselves—consider the late operas of Verdi, Otello and Falstaff, in This is at once a long way from Falstaff—and not a long way from whose librettos Arrigo Boito produced some of his most dramatically Elizabethan England. Byron stuck to writing bad Stately Shakespeare; effective verse. Where is the great English opera based on Lear? In Tennyson wrote every kind of Shakespeare badly, but Witty the English-speaking world, Shakespeare has inspired performers to Shakespeare worst of all. Tennyson’s contemporary theatergoers felt outdo themselves; he has inspired poets to redo Shakespeare. that way, too, as did Byron’s. The most popular poets of their time, both Byron and Tennyson were failures at writing for the stage. What do I mean? In the 20th century, the big names have a go at it still. Yeats has I mean: All for Love; or, The World Well Lost. The Borderers. Remorse. several plays, some in prose with verse songs, others, like the The Cenci. Otho the Great. Sardanapalus, Cain, Heaven and Earth, short late play “Resurrection,” in blank verse. (Auden attempted Marino Faliero. Queen Mary, Becket, Harold, The Cup and the Falcon. something in dramatic format called The Sea and the Mirror, which he himself called a “commentary” on The Tempest, and it would be Which is to imply: John Dryden. William Wordsworth. Samuel a mistake to consider it a failed “verse play.”) Eliot is the poet who Taylor Coleridge. Percy Bysshe Shelley. John Keats. Lord Byron. made the most sustained, most self-conscious attempts at the verse Alfred Tennyson. play in English, with The Cocktail Party and Murder in the Cathedral. In Eliot’s case, we are perhaps too close in time to accurately judge It seems that every ambitious poet has a failed blank verse drama in the his success or failure; as of now, it would seem that his plays are for Collected somewhere. Only Alexander Pope seemed practical enough the Eliot specialists, while poems like The Waste Land, “Prufrock,” to know he best not try such a thing. We don’t read these plays, not and “Four Quartets” will be how he is remembered. even as closet dramas. Sweet Keats writing about bloody murder and palace intrigue? That holy firebrand Shelley writing about incest in an We do have an example of a 20th-century writer making a reasonable Italian Renaissance family? We don’t want to read this kind of thing success of a verse play. Christopher Fry is universally classified as a from our favorite poets. Who wants to see a ballerina in boxing gloves? “dramatist” or “playwright,” not as a “poet”—and this is, to my mind, Yet it’s not that these were exclusively lyric poets, either; Byron wrote a crucial detail, one that proves just how successful he was with it. widely read (in his time) narrative poems like The Giaour, and a highly Yet it’s precisely in the poetry of his work that the trouble arises. readable (in our time) comic epic, Don Juan. Tennyson, too, had his While Eliot tried to create a distinctive, modern dramatic verse that Idylls of the King. But when it came to verse drama, they became owed something but not everything to the Elizabethans, Fry made pseudo-Shakespeares. With Byron, it was the blank verse: the same mistake as Tennyson and Byron—only he made it more effectively. The briefest excerpt of Kenneth Branaugh’s production of SARDANAPALUS (speaking to some of his attendants). The Lady’s not for Burning (available, as of this writing, on YouTube) Let the pavilion over the Euphrates shows us the Shakespearean actor quite at home speaking Fry’s blank verse. Fry’s most famous play is set in medieval England, after all;

20 Verse wisconsin #108 April 2012 move this verse anywhere else, geographically or temporally, and its unsuitability becomes evident. Fry’s play is in dramatic verse, but his The First Law of Succession is that there are no successors. There’s a dramatic verse isn’t a viable dramatic idiom. rider to that law. Until someone succeeds.

And that is what Eliot was trying to do: create a dramatic idiom that I haven’t written this to say the obvious—dramatic verse is dead—or would also be poetry. He wasn’t the last to try. Contemporary poets to explain the obvious obviously—because no one likes verse dramas like J. D. McClatchy and Glyn Maxwell are trying to do the same anymore. thing. Naturally their work goes unwelcomed by the main outlets for drama in our time—television and film. Their work for the stage The interesting thing is, verse drama has died before. It flourishes isn’t in the tradition of Shakespeare and Racine, though on the randomly and briefly. The lasting Greek verse plays were written surface it seems that way; Hollywood screenwriters have the same over a span of two generations; so were the lasting Elizabethan ones. role in today’s society as the great verse playwrights did in theirs. The In both cases, that curious explosion was followed by a long reign work of today’s verse dramatists is part of the larger phenomenon of of comedies of manners and melodrama. Prose reasserted itself in “experimental theater”—something that began in the late 19th and drama, in both cases. Ancient Greek comedy, and eventually Roman 20th centuries, as the center of gravity shifted from stage to screen. comedy, developed from the example of Menander, not that of Aristophanes; similarly our situational comedies are closer, in form A Hollywood producer (go ahead, try pitching him your original verse and substance, to Wycherly and Sheridan than they are to Measure screenplay) might take his cigar out of his mouth and tell you, with for Measure. some impatience, that the contemporary audience doesn’t “want” dramatic poetry. But it would be just as accurate to say the audience This holds in more than one context: Racine and Corneille were doesn’t need dramatic poetry. We forget the role that poetry—and contemporaries in France, just as Calderon and Lope de Vega were evocative language in general—had onstage before the advent of film in Spain. Competition—from the ancient Dionysia, to the different and special effects in the 20th, and melodrama (dramawith music) in companies of players in Shakespeare’s time, to the rival studios of the 19th. Poetry served as a kind of poor man’s special effect, a poor Hollywood—seems to play a role here. It’s not an accident that great man’s background music. dramatists, unlike great poets, come in twos and threes; the example of a Marlowe drives a Shakespeare. Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. Is a brief, random, one- or two-generation explosion of verse plays I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. impossible? The visual fixation of modern audiences—audience Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible implies audition, hearing; perhaps we should call them viewers— To feeling as to sight? or art thou but makes it unlikely. The technological shift, from nearly bare stage to A dagger of the mind, a false creation, Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? richly detailed screen, makes it even more unlikely. The emphasis I see thee yet, in form as palpable among most poets on “lyric” poetry doesn’t help. (“Lyric” as As this which now I draw. distinguished from “dramatic” and “narrative” poetry, according to the traditional division; in practice, as we all know, these categories Macbeth’s seven-line hallucination makes the drawing of the knife overlap.) The poets’ aversion to dramatic writing is matched by infinitely more ominous than if he had simply slid it out. This effect an aversion to poetry on the part of practicing screenwriters and would be expressed, in a film, with ominous-sounding background playwrights—and, ahem, moviegoers and theatergoers. music and a close-up on the villain’s face. No language needed. So no, things don’t look good for the return of verse drama. (I can In Elizabethan times, Shakespeare’s stage was almost bare. The stage tell you’re surprised by that conclusion.) But is it impossible? machinery of the court masque, meanwhile, was elaborate; the production and costumes were the thing; accordingly the poetry Verse drama, let us recall, withered long before the advent of film and was weaker, even when written by poets like Ben Jonson. It’s the television. I drew an analogy earlier between portrait-painting and same reason opera librettos are impoverished of metaphor. You can’t dramatic verse; but it wasn’t totally accurate. We can observe a sharp follow the music and the complex language at the same time, and decline in portraiture, and realism in European art generally, that that confusion, that constant sense of missing something, is fatal to is coeval with the development and dissemination of photography. dramatic momentum. The Greek tragedies and French tragedies The centuries match. But with dramatic poetry, that’s not the case. were simply staged, by any standard. (Simply sending a third actor Technology may well have salted the earth. But we don’t know that. onstage was considered, in Aeschylus’s time, revolutionary.) As for poets and playwrights, their ideas about their art tend to Today, the camera presents a relatively massive amount of information change rapidly. There are no idees fixes when it comes to aesthetics. to the eye; a gesture or facial expression can be magnified to the One generation likes Tennyson, the next likes Eliot, the one after size of a theater wall. There is no necessity for language to evoke a that, Plath. The screen, meanwhile, has no allegiances at all, which is physical scene or to express an emotion—we can see for ourselves another way of saying its only allegiance is to whatever works. So the now, thank you very much. The burden of expression has shifted burden is, as it has always been, on the writer—it’s up to the writer away from the script. The technology of the screen makes poetry to make it work. To make it work for the people in the seats and the redundant, if not counterproductive. Language has atrophied in critic in his or her head. To create something dramatic—as in I have drama for the same reason portrait-painting has atrophied in art. To to see what’s going to happen next; as in conflict, argument, violence, be displaced by a technology is usually a permanent exile. resolution—that is also poetic—as in the top of the head being taken off. To combine these two characteristics, the dramatic and The only poem written for the screen was written before the the poetic, is to the English language what Fermat’s last, insoluble invention of the motion picture: Goethe’s Faust Part II, published Theorem is to number theory. (Did I say insoluble? Did I say is? My in 1832, is a dramatic work one hundred and fifty years in advance mistake: A proof was published in 1995.) This particular “insoluble” of the cinematographic techniques required for its presentation. literary problem has stumped everyone from Dryden to Eliot. Formally, it is futuristic. But unlike Jules Verne, whose prophecies about submarines and lunar landings came true, Goethe, in his last Let’s get to work. crowning work, was the prophet of a dramatic art that was not to be. His Faust Part II was the first and last screenpoem. VerseWISCONSIN.org 21 Excerpt from Schnauzer—a play in one act by David Yezzi Scene Two wearing his headphones, she shakes her head PAM and waves him off.) (Far-away sound of dogs barking. Water sound. Okay! Jeez. Well, that would solve the problem, a nice dog, Lights up on a swimming pool. CLIP in shorts (He shakes his head and puts his ear buds back a little fur-ball sleeping on the bed? and sunglasses dozes in a lounge chair, with a in. Pause.) Its little food bowl waiting in the kitchen, newspaper across his chest. He is listening to its tail wagging to take it out for a pee? music through headphones and, in his conscious (In a deep voice.) “Yes, Pam. Exile is a critical favorite Sweet little poochie. moments, sipping a gin and tonic through a straw. of the Rolling Stones, the culmination of I’m not sure, though, it’s right that pets rely PAM, downstage, in a bathing suit and terrycloth their classic period in the early 70s. completely on one owner. It’s too much. robe is skimming the pool. Light reflects off the I particularly admire Keith Richards’ vocals Plus, that’s a lot of responsibility to have water onto her legs. After a moment . . .) on this one, though some think he sounds too raw. for a creature that leaves messes on the rug. It’s really just a matter of taste.” And I Rrruff.(She barks suddenly, then smiles at herself.) PAM do have good taste. In music. You (she mouths (A pause. She skims. He swats at a black fly. I am so . . . O, so, so, so, so . . . (She shudders.) silently) a-hole. She sings, distractedly.) God . . . What is wrong with me? I’m such a baby. That’s one of the things you don’t know about me. I need a love to keep me happy. Can you even hear me with those things on? Or maybe you do know. I don’t know. Who knows? I need a love to keep me happy. (Testing him . . .) (Mouthing again.) Check, please! Baby. Baby, keep me happy. Whoa, something’s on the bottom (A pause. Then, blithely . . .) Baby. Baby, keep me happy. Some kind of animal, I think. Always the clever conversationalist. (Short pause.) It’s okay, just ignore me. It’s fine with me. Did you just love the water, when you were young? Just kidding. ‘Cause I don’t need to talk to anyone— When I was six or seven, I remember (Still no response.) except maybe to a shrink (laughs); that would we used to spend whole summers by the pool. Okey-dokey. (Loudly.) What are you be nice. I’d stay in till my lips turned purple and I listening to? I mean, I used to need it, need to talk. I’d come out come out shaking. And then I’d just lie (She waves. He removes his earphones.) Talk to people. Talk to other people. across the hot stones where the sun had baked them Hey! Are you listening to something good? But not anymore. I gave it up. It gave and feel the heat seep back into my body. me up, I guess, might be the way to put it. As soon as school was out, I’d want to swim, CLIP Oh god, not you. I don’t mean that you did, but it was so cold still in June. We had a rule, (Testily.) Nothing. It’s just . . . not you all by yourself, in isolation. my mother had this rule: it had to be The Stones. I’m listening to the Rolling Stones, ok? But everyone. And sometimes I go days seventy-five degrees before we could swim, without talking to another living soul. before we could even go it had to be PAM Well, pleasantries. Like “Have a nice day, Charles.” seventy-five, not seventy-three or -four. Which one? Or “Could you drop my dress off at the drycleaners?” The problem is we didn’t have a thermometer, But that’s to you. I don’t mean you, not you so we’d have to check the temperature by phone. CLIP exclusively. We’d call in every minute just to see Which what? If I go out, like to the grocery store, if it had gotten warmer. On the phone. I maybe, if I see my friends, say, “Hi,” Remember when you could do that? Charlie? Clip? PAM like to a neighbor or the grocery guy. Which album are you listening to? (Barking in the distance.) CLIP Hear that? Whose dog is that? What? CLIP That dog’s been getting bolder every morning. (Exhaling loudly.) Exile, all right? On Main Street? He was over here. Did you see him, Clip? PAM I’m listening to Keith Richards sing a song He was just standing in the middle of the yard. Remember when there was a number you could call called “Happy,” ok!? You happy? He didn’t move, just stood there like a statue. to check the temperature? (He stares at her. A pause. She goes back to He had one of those painful looking penises. skimming, then . . .) Why do their penises get red like that? CLIP Like bloody. Maybe we should get a dog. You want to know the temperature? PAM Ruff. Ruff. Ruff. Ruff. Exile on Main Street. Is that your favorite? (More barking. She turns to him, pleased.) PAM Do you hear that? That’s not . . . CLIP Ah, mmm-hmm. Look, I’m listening. Okay? CLIP CLIP I’m listening! Are you talking to me? It’s seventy-five degrees. (He holds up his iPod.) (PAM laughs, and, seeing that he is still 22 Verse wisconsin #108 April 2012 PAM CLIP which wasn’t very smart of me because I should go swimming. I don’t think so. it hurt. But at the time I didn’t notice, CLIP I think you’re just a little stressed right now. just pounding on his hood. I tried to dent it. Not me. It’s way too freaking cold for swimming. Have a drink or take a nap or . . . swim. And then it got a little out of hand. You know, just take a swim. You’re all wound up. PAM CLIP Hey, Clip, I want to tell you something. PAM Oh, my god. What happened? What did you do? Listen: last week I went completely berserk. CLIP I mean I lost my head, completely lost it. PAM What? I was walking by the corner of Lexington Avenue What did I do? I freaking screamed at him. with a bag—I had couple shopping bags, I went around and tried to open the door. PAM from the liquor store and from the grocery Then he gets out and starts dialing on his phone Yesterday I saw this crazy thing. store— and tells me that he’s going to call the cops. I was sitting by the park, last night, you know, and it’s hot, I think that’s part of it, it’s hot, “Call the cops,” I say, “go call the cops. just people watching, on a bench—it’s dusk— and humid like it was all week last week. I’ll wait right here you homicidal jerk.” when this little kid goes by, this boy. He’s three So, I’m half way, walking in the crosswalk, when or four, just sitting in his father’s arms. the light turns green before I get across. CLIP And he’s saying to his father, loud enough But I’m so completely almost on the curb, Jesus, Pammy. So what the hell did you do? so everyone can hear, “I’ll burn it down. but walking in the crosswalk. So this guy I’m going to burn it down! If we go home, comes speeding up to me . . . PAM I’m going to burn it down.” And the poor father I don’t know. I think I went too far. is all tensed up and anxious, walking quickly CLIP It pretty much got out of hand from there. and trying not to let it get to him. The light was green? “I’m going to burn it down. If we go home, CLIP I’m going to burn it down.” Can you imagine? PAM Um. Okay? The kid was talking about his own apartment! Yes, the light was green. His light was green. I mean, I can imagine. I think I know So what? So what is that supposed to mean? PAM just how he feels. But of course he doesn’t know So he gets out. He gets out of the car. what he’s saying. I’m not saying that I want CLIP And he sort of hits me, pushes me like, but to burn down the apartment. Hahahaha! Nothing. Nothing. God. It’s just a question. with the door. Though that would save us having to paint I’m trying to understand the situation. It’s like the door swings and it pushes me, the place. So the light goes green, and he starts going. you know? No, he just knows that he is really mad. So I grab him as he’s getting out, I grab And the father knows he isn’t really mad, PAM his jacket, or I guess maybe his arm, he’s hungry because he hasn’t eaten anything But just green, just then green. It just because he starts yelling that I scratched him. or sick or tired or up late past his bedtime. turned green But I swear I didn’t, not that I remember. He’s screaming, but it’s really something else and he starts moving, speeds up, because he Then he grabs me with his arm and holds that’s bothering him, whatever it is, probably sees me. me there. nothing. That’s the thing I’m trying to tell you, he So . . . But what?, I kept wondering. What’s steps on the gas because he sees me there. bothering you? And so I stop. CLIP (CLIP has put his headphones back in.) I see him, so I stop right where I am. So? I need to tell you something: I’m leaving you. I’ve decided I have to leave. CLIP PAM (He doesn’t hear her. She goes over to him I’m sure he scared you. You probably just froze. So, I bit him. and sits down.) Can you stop listening for a minute, Charles? PAM CLIP I need to tell you something. Can you listen No, I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t scared at all. You bit him? for just a minute? Just only for a second. I was absolutely freaking furious. I’m sure that’s what he wanted was to scare me. PAM CLIP But why does he have to speed up just because Yes, I bit him. Okay. I’m listening. I was still walking after the light had changed? I know because I felt him in my mouth. I felt his skin for a second between my teeth. PAM CLIP And then I ran. His blood was in my mouth, I think I may be having a nervous breakdown. So did he stop? like metal. “You’re crazy, lady, you are freaking crazy,” CLIP PAM he yells at me, and in my mind he’s right. What? Why do you say that? Yes, he stopped. You’re goddamned right he I’m crazy. I think I’ve lost my freaking mind. stopped. I’m standing in the middle of the street, PAM About an inch away from me. So then, screaming like a total psychopath, I’m not kidding. I think I may be crazy. I lost it. I started pounding on his car, like it’s a crime scene or an accident or something. VerseWISCONSIN.org 23 And you know what? I couldn’t give a shit. PAM like this heavy weight is sitting on my chest I just watched it happen, just like on TV. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, okay. whenever I stop and think about my life. Like on a cop show, when people act like that. God, I’m such a baby. CLIP And everyone I know feels just like I do. CLIP Okay. I can’t remember what I thought I wanted. Pam, you gotta take it easy . . . We’ll just go out and have a quiet time. I want a baby. It’s not your fault, I know. And I realize that that is not the answer PAM PAM to why I’m so unhappy most of the time. Relax? Don’t freaking tell me to relax! Yeah, that’s good. I’m sorry. But actually it is. I mean, you’re right. I do need to relax. (CLIP puts on his music and lies back. She It’s just that nothing else has any value. I’m going crazy. Am I completely crazed? sings.) Work means nothing. So I sell a house? I need a love to keep me happy. I make some money. Maybe we buy a house. CLIP Baby. Baby, keep me happy. Why can’t things like that just be enough? No. God no, Pammy. That guy was a jerk. Disappointed, that’s the word I want. Oh, this is stupid. Oh, god, that’s it. I’m so completely disappointed. The sun is shining, the temperature PAM And I know that I don’t have a right to feel is a lovely seventy-five degrees.(Laughs.) Don’t you see that I was being the jerk. this way, which makes it worse, unbearable I should go for a swim. What’s happening to me? That was my fault. almost, almost completely stifling, so that it feels like there’s this heavy weight, (Sounds of barking nearby. Fade out.) CLIP No, it wasn’t.

PAM The Doomsayer Yes, it was. It was. CLIP Omen of this poem, smoke He revs his car at people in the street. swirls out of nowhere, gathers He should lose his license. What did the cops say? and descends as if small tornadoes inhaled at slow intervals PAM like a fire-eater might without a brand. They never came. I don’t think he ever called them.

CLIP As to the verse, may it Of course. Because he knew that he was wrong. be more than a version of your act in reverse— PAM But I couldn’t let it go. Because I was right. behind the scene the stem of the pipe, Bly Land But what does being right entitle you to? the bowl’s interior, Nothing. which is cooling, growing How strange it is to wake up What does being on the right side get you? the tobacco and, in doing so, accepts without you and to struggle You can do everything exactly by the book, the smoke like so many genies back in a bottle, with padded overalls and mittens go to the right schools, marry the right people. transformed, trapped in their latent state before shoveling snow. What’s wrong with that? Why isn’t that enough? as a flame collapses into a match. Crows drop no more feathers. CLIP Ink blots freeze on the page. What’s not enough? You are reminded of when there were wishes, your only hope. I think of our winters in L.A., PAM how the grass turned green after rain Never mind. I’m sorry. Look, I’m tired. Drumroll. and we watched TV football Go back to listening. I’m okay now. played in the worst conditions The end is near. and then went out for a swim CLIP and licked the salt from our hands. Okay. Forget that guy. It’s not your fault. And already here. Here there are prayers to write PAM I know. Okay. I’m fine. I feel much better. —Karl Elder, Howards Grove, WI of the caves that open under my hands like the potholes CLIP and riptides that made a wet suit You want to go someplace for dinner later? the smart thing to wear even if we didn’t swim solo.

24 Verse wisconsin #108 April 2012 —William Ford, Iowa City, IA The Magpie The Poet as Plumber She caws at A person with ambition wouldn’t call me from the swaying a plumber to stop the leaky faucet branch of an oak tree. of a clock, yet its tick is a steady drip you could do without if only you “Are you a poet?” she asks. I nod my head ashamed. had the part, the right tool, the wherewithal “Then we two are alike, as to where to start. What about this part? At the Writing Desk Go ahead. Don’t be a fool. What’s to lose (to Lorine Niedecker) honey,” she says. “We when what’s to choose is a flood of silence. both steal what glitters Can I learn the trade? best out there.” —Karl Elder, Howards Grove, WI No one was here to advise me. —Alessandra Bava, Rome, Italy visit VW Online for audio by this author My Muses and I sit at your desk and whilst The Weekly Reader you condense, we hammer away Fridays were good—they meant Princess of Pretense Saturday matinees, baby sitters, at our keys.

hamburgers and my parents dancing She reads another book, at the Indiana Roof Ballroom. —Alessandra Bava, Rome, Italy certain someone else’s words visit VW Online for audio by this author might present all the steps After lunch, The Weekly Reader appeared she needs to follow to find on our desks, the type in narrow columns, the life she wants to lead. a treat designed by well meaning educators, a diversion from food rationing and air-raid drills. She studies many novels, seeks out stories of celebrities, There were stories about the Liberty Bell, loves King Arthur and his lovely lady, the invention of the auto, and a few jokes and finds education in romance. —pale ink on dull newsprint. We became She believes she’s making progress, sleepy and boys picked mosquito bites. growing wiser, more informed.

In the afternoon, Life came She has not thought to question in the mail. I scoured the pages: why she chooses to spend hours gray tanks, warplanes, fat bombs, every day with characters injuries, bandages, and one— who are no longer living or who never lived at all. a chubby toddler in her jade green jacket, warm pants and cloth slippers on the steps Well-defended in her fortress of a demolished temple—no wound showing. of printed words, a private realm of black and white, and still resists In color, the shiny paper made war seem joining those who might talk with her, real. But most photos were black and white. touch or tempt her to take the risk of being real. —Jeanine Stevens, Sacramento, CA —Lou Roach, Poynette, WI VerseWISCONSIN.org 25 Excerpt from Four Riffs for a Sailor—Calypso by Monica Raymond

(sings) I’m on an island. dyed Tyrian purple Down the way where the nights are gay drops from the blue And the sun shines daily on the mountain top What do you think comes my way? Or should I took a trip on a sailing ship I say who? among the conch and tortoise shells And when I reach ba bum bum I made a stop on the beach, the boulders— Use your imagination. gold tankards, incised with vines Was it Jamaica, my island? No, don’t think so. and long scenes of faithfulness Dolphin and squid from the water. Ba bum bum Gods descend from the air. thankfulness and forgetfulness Ba bum bum Was I always on an island? that’s Hephaestus’ work Some three syllable island—come on, quiz Sometimes it feels that way, yes. and at his best kids in the audience, press that buzzer. I don’t know how to no thrift store goblets Was it Jamaica, my island? answer that question. bitter residue in the corners abrasives will never scrub out No, I don’t think so, though on one side it had And sometimes in my bed, a specimen, the plateau of faintly sloping sand beaches of skeleton, I don’t know these untouched, like candy Jamaica. Was it Sicily? On one side, the rocky how he got there, how long he’ll stay, when still in the wrapper outcrops and thyme nibbling goats. Sardinia— he’ll leave no fishermen hauling nets? Samos, Patmos, and in the storeroom, amphoras fill Skyros, Santorini—no volcanos, no murals, My Love and nourishment with new green olive oil no eclipses, the curve of the shore which is the both come from the sea and honeyed wines eyelash curve of sleep, the island which a man I have not tasted in many a year and woman make on a sheet— One night I’ll caress every tentacle, mead and oloroso An undiscovered island And next morning, I’ll fire up the brazier, amber, velvets grill him over branches I don’t think you will find it. Nor do you need to. So this a big fish we’re hauling in a girl’s gotta eat (sings) Not the usual riffraff It’s not on any chart The wild goats know better than to get within iron smelters, spear carriers You must find it with your heart… shouting distance. I pull their hair from the thorns. who only get a cask or two Of necessity, I will be a pastiche, I’ll have to of retsina show you the way to the place you can’t get to, He sleeps like someone drugged past midday, through a series of riffs, gests, gestures, hands, the stubble on his face rising and falling with Not that they’re not grateful for it butts, bits— his breath like some hairy sea urchin moved by the tides And I as well You wake up to find a man in your bed, the rustling walls let in blue night, the tent top He’s wrapped in white cloth, unspeckled I’m no winemaker open to the moon That’s got to be Athena’s doing though I’ve been known, when desperate to suck at the wrinkled teats Asleep, unshaven, full lips, Like a newborn of the wild grapes black curls, rimed with gray and salt little bundle of joy bandy legged hoping for some sweet knowledge I run a hospice for the gods— of dissolution Feet calloused almost thick, like a faun’s Maybe that’s not the right word So even a toast of rotgut intensive care unit? out of a tortoise shell And how do I know that, you wonder. detox center? the sandy pawings of some rube They outfit me—accordingly. from the outback Yes. And yes. But sporadically. give what I crave Three years of scraping hide for pillows a blurring And others. Yes. and gathering dandelion duff for down woozy meltdown Use your imagination. like a housewife at any meager outpost remote from the affairs of state of what’s otherwise all too clear Did I mess around as a girl? when one day, weeks before this sailor’s arrival, the stipple of faint thorns Yes, if you must know. a load of Indian silk on wildflowers

26 Verse wisconsin #108 April 2012 thistle on the beach at dawn point is—what looks like mess is Fascist, under a layer of guile the sky and wistfulness implacable blue you didn’t come here for philosophy I’m therapist, courtesan, you came for a good play anything but wife or lay Reading Aloud “But you knew that from the first,” but you see says Hermes, trying to be helpful it’s not your day In the lamp’s arc, in your little bed-boat or rubbing salt in— you are ferried to sleep by pictures and words; it is Odysseus’ day maybe both. a ritual ballast to keep you afloat— Yuh—how did I forget it I straddle him and say in the lamp’s glow, your bed rocks like a boat with him muttering Penelope, Penelope “wake up it’s time on a deep sea and the story’s a moat you’re not where you were against monsters, against all night hazards. she singing some dove gray lullaby See? The lamp is a moon, your bed is a boat not where you think you are he tied to the mast and sleep is a river of pictures and words… and twitching this island is unknown “Cut me down,” he’s saying in Ithaka” —Lorna Knowles Blake, New York City “You bastards, none of you’s worth the pittance it costs to feed you! Cut me down but he snores on and I’ll swim back to Ithaka a train Diagnosis the three pronged glyph stowed in the railyard at the heart of the Siren’s song A striped umbrella planted in the sand that can’t forget its rough is casting arcs of crayoned light journey Ithaka, Ithaka that shade us as we read. riding the gray backs of dolphins— And so, another day in his long sleep A toddler sleeps, another shrieks. which seems to have its own rhythm— In terror? Joy? She can’t yet know, Cut me down! Cut me down!” and all around us these tableaux now baby sleep in which the knitted brow repeat their variations endlessly… grows sheer as muslin He thrashed in bed like something tied and trying to peel free years lift from his face frantically this way and that, and I see the bright boy who first set out The surf breaks white along the shore the memory of those bonds as terns and seagulls circle back for more stronger than the ample air around him now labored breathing of what their graceful labor yields, — fits, dream fragments and nothing—nothing—it now seems, muttered or stuttered words “Penelope, Penelope,” he cried. could possibly invade the glazed But I didn’t know it at first. “My name is NO MAN”—existentialist— I thought he was saying even in sleep, the trickster. midsummer satisfaction of this day “Envelop me! Envelop me!” until the lifeguard shades his eyes. So I did. I know who you are, you are Odysseus, nine years storm-tossed from home. He blows his whistle I’m your last shot before oblivion, I’m the whore of peace (three staccato blasts), and this is the brothel of peace. before the gods give up on you for good. and people crowd and point and squint The gods knew what they were doing beyond the sand bar where the sea is dark— when they put us at such a remove too dark to tell if that creature racing toward us is a dolphin, That Zeus, he’s damn clever or a shark. And all that tabloid bullshit he does fucking swans or whatever —Lorna Knowles Blake, New York City is just to make him come off like some randy man of the people it’s thought through, believe me than juiced up and scrambled to appear spontaneous but I digress

VerseWISCONSIN.org 27 Cross-eyed superintendent sutherland demanded to meet with my family wednesday night after supper he smiled briefly at my parents then focused squarely on me O Hair after Donald Hall and what exactly were you thinking don’t you realize you’ve sinned Glory be to hair wrapped in rags, pincurled or twisted against the trinity babdist church ‘round steaming irons or frothed with Toni home perms, and the entire eastman kodak company part frizz and stink, the next day’s disgrace. Perhaps why for the love of god did you the beauty of bangs cut crooked, of braids and ponytails. want to make baby jesus cry O hair of childhood, hair of sweet and nice, the way I had to admit it was a split mother pushed in waves, set, then spilled them to a surge. second decision on my part O hair of youth, SunIn streaked or Nestlés incensed reds, just as the superintendent was about to snap the curvy and asymmetrical, the bouffant, the ooh la la. our third grade sunday school class graduation picture Splendiferous pixie and poodle and poof to grin and cross my eyes and abundant Aqua Net to hold them stiff or flipped. Then soft and insolent, begging to be ironed my parents were struck dumb straight, middle-parted, tucked behind ears. when he produced the photograph in evidence your son has managed single handedly O hair of dance and swing, O bob and beehive, to ruin our 1956 church family album the Watusi of hair, the Shing-a-ling, the Philly Soul. tears welled in my mother’s eyes O rock of hair ‘n’ roll and California dreamin’ as she stared at the portrait and bandanas tied mid-brow. O hair of war and peace. of her white shirted bow tied boy surrounded by girls in easter pastel pinafores The fabulous shag, the mullet, the rattail, the spikes, spin curls and finger waves, the swing, the spunky funk. mom started to speak Still crazy side ponies and messy buns. O hair of the famous: but broke out in a laugh the Rachel, the Farrah, the Dorothy Hamill wedge. grabbed her stomach rocking back and forth trying clearly O hair of speculation, I give you permission to fade. not to split a gut O happiness of hair, wispy browns and grays. O ghostly hair and mystery, I love the way you’ve grown. my dad glanced at the photo and guffawed Given this silver halo, this moonlit me, the longing to be known. that’s hilarious he said and slapped my knee

—Karla Huston, Appleton, WI superintendent sutherland stood up when the laughter died down I took a breath and apologized I never intended to make baby jesus cry I said “O Hair,” by Karla Huston, won the 2011 Jade Ring Award, offered my mother rose and suppressed another chuckle by the Wisconsin Writers Association. Future winners of WWA as she showed him the door saying poetry contests will be published by Verse Wisconsin.The WWA was I’m so sorry it won’t happen again started by Robert Gard in 1948. Members enjoy annual contests goodnight with cash prizes, two conferences, five publications, and publishing opportunities. The WWA welcomes all writers of every genre and he left she shut the front door category of creative writing. For more information, please visit www. and turned to face me wiwrite.org. winked and pulled her dentures out tugged her ears up and crossed her eyes

—Bruce Dethlefsen, Westfield, WI visit VW Online for video by this author 28 Verse wisconsin #108 April 2012 Blood Ties

Behind him is my grandfather, who told me lurid tales about law enforcement in the Wild West–but my grandmother told me not to believe a word of it. Home Affair —Man on Antiques Roadshow The back room’s beveled Perhaps he didn’t really window has split the light endure a savage beating into tiny rainbows. by outlaws and then drag his broken body from bed Now the leaves rustle barely to gun them down three yards away at the Silver Slipper. but rustle they do. Maybe he exaggerated when, pointing to his bald spot, I’ll smudge the air he claimed an Indian brave reluctantly had half scalped him before he with pine deodorizer came to and sunk a Bowie knife while you make the bed. into the brave’s belly. And I suppose it’s unlikely The kids will enter that he outdrew Billy the Kid, with the same homework winged him, then patched him up blues and empty bellies and got drunk with him. But as yesterday, thinking curled up in bed in my pajamas as they always do I took every word as gospel – that dad’s home early tales of what true men are called helping their mother- upon to do. While he was the-maid with one more in the room, my courage soared, version of gender though when he left, the villains resettlement. of his stories rose up in the shadows: Snarling Sam Jackson, After dinner we’ll play them who cut off a man’s nose into yawns with songs in a knife fight. Belle Harrington, from the fifties who poisoned five husbands. Doke Gray, until bed’s for them who blew off a deputy’s head Old Clothes then tip-toe back here with a point-blank shotgun blast. Wardrobe of who I was and break ourselves up Still, I wouldn’t trade those now that I nearly know who I am. all over again. sleepless nights for anything.

Red blood coursed through my Forgotten in drawers —William Ford, Iowa City, IA grandfather’s veins, was splashed dark corners of closets across his stories, and to this day, folded layers of life. no pallid tales of interior struggle can satisfy my longing Wrinkles in work shirts for a hero. around my eyes

across my forehead. —Lawrence Kessenich, Watertown, MA Creases carved by tears. Seersucker of an old man’s skin.

A being in bags and boxes collected for a rummage sale.

—David Gross, Pinckneyville, IL

VerseWISCONSIN.org 29 Dear Cruel World—a ten-minute play by Kevin Drzakowski CHARACTERS Whatever. I’m not writing poetry. DOUG. He speaks rather half-heartedly.) CURT, twenties to forties, a rather depressed (He writes, this time resolutely.) man. “Dear Cruel World.” CURT DOUG, twenties to forties, Curt’s friend, just (He looks at the paper.) No, don’t do that. as depressed but a lot less subdued. Is that how you spell cruel? ANDREA, twenties to forties, Doug’s (This clearly bothers him. He wrestles with DOUG girlfriend and an acquaintance of Curt. himself, keeps looking over at the bookshelf, You tell me why I shouldn’t. then finally goes over to get the dictionary. SCENE He quickly finds the word.) CURT SETTING: A drab, poorly lit bedroom. The U-E. Because…we all have just so much to live for. only important piece of scenery is a desk with (He looks at the notepad.) a rolling swivel chair. Why did I think it was E-U? DOUG TIME: The present. (He scratches his first line out, then keeps Oh yeah? Like what? writing on the same sheet of paper.) (CURT enters the bedroom. He closes the “D-E-A-R-C-R-U-E-L World.” CURT door, then lightly bangs his head against it. (Beat.) Like…Garfield cartoons. He leans with his back on the door and “I’m very sorry to resort to this.” sighs.) (He stops.) DOUG I can’t have that scratched out word at the top. Garfield cartoons? That comic sucks! CURT My friends will think that I’m killing myself That cat hates Mondays, man. But he’s a cat! I can’t believe I ran over that cat. because of my lackluster spelling skills. Cats don’t get up and have to go to work (He crosses to the rolling swivel chair (He throws the whole notepad away.) or get stuck in a morning traffic jam. behind his desk. He stares blankly for a bit.) Forget the note. What reason could a cat possibly have My whole entire life is a disaster. (He picks up the gun once more.) for caring whether people drive to work? Well, this is it. The final straw. I’m done. OK. So this is it. (He opens the desk drawer and takes out a (He inhales deeply and shuts his eyes. A CURT gun. He then takes out a box, opens it, and noise outside the door surprises him. There’s definitely one reason I know. pulls out one bullet. He loads the gun. He Someone knocks at the bedroom door. sets the gun on the desk and studies it for a while.) CURT quickly shoves the gun in the desk DOUG drawer and closes it, just as his friend (Getting up and pacing.) CURT DOUG enters the room.) It’s me who should be hating days like Monday. (Blankly.) I have to go to work. I hate my job. I guess I probably should write a note. DOUG And by the way, today is Monday, Curt. (CURT rummages through his desk drawer (Not looking happy.) Now I feel even worse about my life. for a while. He comes up with a notepad. Hey, Curt. You got some time to talk with me? He studies the notepad with a frown.) CURT I can’t use Garfield paper for this note. CURT I kind of have my own things going on. (He digs through the drawer a little more, I’m kind of in the middle of something. then searches the room in a futile effort. DOUG Finally, he looks back at the notepad in his DOUG (Sarcastic.) hand.) (Sitting on the bed.) Oh, sorry! What a selfish thing to think, But then again, it’s Monday, so it works. To tell the truth, things aren’t so good for me. that I could come here in my hour of need, (He half shrugs, then sits down and pulls a to my best friend to open up my soul! pen out of the drawer. He starts to write on CURT ‘Cause after all, when someone is depressed, the notepad, but the pen won’t write. He Me neither, Doug. the last one he should count on is his friend. scratches the pen on the paper in frustration.) You really are an awful person, Curt. Why don’t I have a single pen that writes? DOUG (He finds a pencil somewhere in the room, No, man, I got real problems. CURT then sits back down to the note.) I cheated on my girlfriend. You know that. Thanks, Doug. That’s just what I needed to hear. And Andrea deserves better than that. Who do I even write this to? “Dear... I feel like there’s a dark pit in my stomach DOUG (Writing.) that’s eaten its way through into my soul. I’m contemplating suicide, but you’re …Friend.” I don’t know how to say this, Curt, but you’re so self-absorbed, so focused on yourself, (He frowns, pulls the paper off the notepad, the only one I feel like I can talk to. you fail to recognize when your best friend then throws it in the trash. He writes again.) The situation bothers me so much... needs help. So thanks a lot for nothing, pal. “To Whom It May Concern.” No, that’s no good. (He leans close to CURT and whispers.) (He rips off that page, too. He rolls his eyes I’ve actually thought of suicide. CURT and shrugs.) (CURT looks back at the desk, then turns to I’m sorry, Doug, it’s just... 30 Verse wisconsin #108 April 2012 DOUG of the drawer.) DOUG I wrote a note. You’d better tell me why you have a gun. (As they wrestle.) You’ve got way more than me. Give me that gun! CURT CURT A note? I couldn’t say. (They are now both on their knees, playing (DOUG takes a deep breath, then holds a game of tug of war with the gun. A voice DOUG the gun up to his head. CURT jumps out from outside the door surprises them.) I did. About my suicide. of his chair and holds up his hands.) Doug, no! Don’t pull that trigger! ANDREA CURT (O.S.) So tell me what you wrote. DOUG Where are you, Curt, you bastard? You give me one good reason why I shouldn’t. (ANDREA enters the door in a hurry, eyes DOUG blazing. She is furious. DOUG and CURT At first, I wrote CURT hurriedly stand up and hide the gun behind “dear cruel world,” but then I figured I Because I only have one bullet left. their backs, even though neither relinquishes could come up with a less pathetic line. (Pause.) his hold on it.) (DOUG takes a piece of paper out of his back I need it. pocket. He takes a deep breath, then begins DOUG reading.) DOUG Andrea? “You’re probably wondering how it came to this. What? I wish that I could offer better reasons. ANDREA The truth is that I have no real excuse. CURT Doug! You’re here, too? I write this only as a means of saying I need that one for me. (This only seems to make Andrea angrier.) how truly sorry I am to cause pain. (As DOUG reads, CURT discreetly reaches DOUG CURT into the trash can and pulls out one of his (Lowering the gun.) What are you doing here? crumpled up pieces of paper. He unfurls it You mean to tell me you were going... and starts to write, copying down what ANDREA DOUG is saying.) CURT I’m gonna kill you both, you idiot! If I had strength, I would try to continue. Yes. But ever since I…” CURT (Seeing what CURT is doing.) DOUG But why? Hey! What are you doing? That’s such a stupid thing to even think! (CURT throws the piece of paper into the ANDREA desk drawer and shuts it in a hurry.) CURT I heard you’re cheating on me, Doug! Don’t tell me you were copying that down! This coming from a guy about to do it. DOUG CURT DOUG Hey, Andrea… (After a pause.) You have to understand, it’s not the same. I might have been. ANDREA CURT And Curt…that was my cat! DOUG Don’t tell me that. I always mess things up. CURT You must be kidding me! Just now, for instance, I ran over a cat. I’m sorry, look... I told you this in confidence, okay? (Crossing to the desk to open it.) DOUG ANDREA Give me that paper! Nobody cares. It’s just a stupid cat. The two of you are dead! I’m horrible. I cheated on my girlfriend. I’m so not even joking. If I had CURT a gun, I swear I’d kill the both of you. No! You stay away! CURT What’s that you guys are hiding over there? (CURT tries to block the desk drawer from My life is worse! DOUG as he sits. DOUG struggles to get CURT around him, then succeeds in doing so by DOUG It’s nothing. pushing away the rolling chair with CURT No, mine is more screwed up! still in it. He flings open the desk drawer (DOUG raises the gun back up to his head, DOUG and pulls out the piece of paper.) but not before CURT dives toward him and Yeah, Curt’s right. There’s nothing here. grabs his arm. They both wrestle over the DOUG gun, slamming into the desk, then rolling ANDREA (Reading.) around on the ground.) Don’t lie to me! What is that? “You’re probably wondering how it came to this. (ANDREA pushes between them and pulls I wish that I could offer better reasons.” CURT the gun away from them. She looks at it.) (Holding up the paper to CURT.) (As they wrestle.) How ‘bout that? I knew it! You were copying my note! Let go! You’ve got so much to live for, Doug! (He gasps, seeing the gun and pulling it out

VerseWISCONSIN.org 31 CURT Wait, Andrea, I think you should calm down. (ANDREA points the gun at him.) My Dad Tries to Be Kind to Me After DOUG My Suicide Attempt Hey I’m the one who cheated, broke your trust. If you kill someone, you’d better kill me. Remember when we stared (She turns the gun to DOUG.) into the sun when you were twelve Man of Few Words CURT and we both couldn’t see I ran over your cat. It should be me! for—what was it—ten minutes? growing up (She points the gun at CURT again.) There’s an eclipse happening I don’t recall next week. DOUG my father and I I think it’s pretty clear I wronged you more. having a lot of conversations —Ron Riekki, Negaunee, MI a man of few words CURT visit VW Online for more work by this author and he was always working Your issue here is obviously with me. either at his job or repairing something around the house DOUG The cheating, by the way? Yeah, it was great. and we really didn’t have I Hear My Calling Calling very much in common CURT it was my older brother Your cat deserved it! Cats deserve to die! Often I have heard it echoing in the canyons who shared his love (ANDREA keeps pointing the gun back in the back of my head but this morning for working on cars and forth, unable to decide. She lowers the I’ve turned toward it cupping my ears. with my father gun.) It calls me out, “This, this you have been doing, I liked reading books ANDREA is not it, and listening to music You two are sick. not it at all, sitting in my room writing stories (ANDREA exits, taking the gun with her.) don’t you hear me based on the giant-monster movies I’d seen I am your calling, calling.” my father didn’t really have any hobbies DOUG none that I can remember anyway Well. That was quite the rush. I try to call back, “Hello, I hear you,” but he was good with his hands Can you believe that she was gonna kill us? but it’s like this dream I’ve had I open and could fix just about anything CURT my mouth but no words come out when I was older I can’t believe she’d want to see us die. I’m yelling the words are rattling we started talking a lot more in the front yard of my head sitting out in the backyard DOUG “What is it under the shade from the apple trees (Taking his note out of his pocket.) what is it you want by then my father was blind Let’s not give her the satisfaction. don’t you hear me and had trouble walking my brother was dead CURT calling, tell me, tell me!” Right. I think I hear an answer, “Remember,” killed years before (DOUG rips his note into pieces. CURT I strain to hear in an automobile accident does the same with the copied note on his what is it during his final years desk.) what is it I must remember I remember my father Is it “Don’t forget the cinnamon!” having to go to dialysis DOUG three days a week When someone wants you dead, then it’s no good Is that what you’re calling, to kill yourself. It messes up the point. the sins of men, the sentiment, and how he was restricted mother, is it you calling? on how much he could drink CURT and I knew I wasn’t suppose to I hear you, Doug. —R. Virgil Ellis, Cambridge, WI but I’d give him water whenever he asked me for it DOUG by tapping his glass on the table We’ve got too much to live for. when my mother was out of the room CURT You’re right, my friend. We both have way —James Babbs, Stanford, IL too much.

(End of play.) 32 Verse wisconsin #108 April 2012 Send Shivers Up Your Spine

Knife Grinder By mistake, a wild vertebrae, raised by a pack of wolves,

wanders into a movie theater.

In the age of backyard laundry lines & rhubarb patches, Soon it is surrounded a knife grinder, once each summer, came around pushing by boxes of hot buttered his hand cart with its giant’s whetstone, pushing it from house popcorn madly throwing goobers. to alley to house & letting out with a wildman’s yell no one

could fathom as he walked his itinerate immigrant’s un- Now anchored against the stage, shackled life, mad grackles screaming from telephone keystones grab pitch forks

and lynchpins light torches. lines overhead while he scuffled along. Housewives

spilled out backdoors with dulled knives, sewing scissors, The crowd taunts and chants: shears in cardboard boxes or a-rattle in apron pockets, “Why don’t you get a backbone?” his gypsy shirt refracted in their sluggish, hausfrau eyes, The ignorant bone cowers a sweat- stained bandana wrapped about his sweat-leathery beneath a chair, spineless. neck. On a Sunday afternoon beneath brilliant autumn leaves

I went with my father to the Croatian Folk Festival to have —Philip Venzke, Stevens Point, WI my first taste of a thick & greasy slice of roasted goat when we chanced on the knife-grinder with his whetstone, sharpening, sharpening, his soup-strainer mustache glistening in goat grease as he laughed up a storm with his harem circling Lies I Tell Myself at Night about him, clucking & scratching up dust, in that time that’s gone. Here’s the clear shit. Reaching under —Milwaukee, 1956 his basement workbench, Grandpa hands me a Mason jar innocent of content. —Terry Savoie, Coralville, IA Years later I’m working with mirrors, practicing my poker face while placing Nessie on that grassy knoll in Dallas.

But how’d it pull the trigger In the Wisconsin Backwoods with those prehistoric flippers? someone wonders from the audience. “Five hours to myself!” I said, “five huge, solid hours.” —John Muir Cartilage! I lie without batting an eye. Reverse-engineering the truth, I strive Before bed, the boy fixes his mind on waking at one, toward six months in my seventies the moon-hour for a ploughboy’s single earth- bound pleasure, the delectable five un- when my apprenticeship is finally harnessed & hermetic hours before milking, done and death can only finish me, hours stolen from sleep, luxurious, chore-less like Ed Markoweicz, 83, who broke hours salubriously & solely his in the cold cellar directly beneath the floorboards of his father’s bedstead, his wrist while bowling. When hours to begin the hungering, idler’s dream, a whittled time- the nurse asked him to spell his name, keeper, a journal, a self-setting sawmill, the inventions he looked her in the eye. Said E.D. blueprinted already during weeks of fieldwork in the brooding furrows of a boy’s imagination. —Mike Kriesel, Aniwa, WI visit VW Online for more work by this author —Terry Savoie, Coralville, IA

VerseWISCONSIN.org 33 The Museum of Unnatural History—a drama in verse by Carol Dorf and Autumn Stephens

BOTH VOICES or, between lovers, Venereal disease. VOICE ONE Prologue: Everything explodes; Tesla’s machine The nature of this unnatural museum: VOICE TWO partially harvests lightning; pre-teens to curate, as in a religious manner, Don’t get started on the diseases open chemistry sets without adult supervision. a collection into comprehensible narrative. or we’ll be like the prematurely aged AIDS generation when we expected VOICE TWO Act 1: Tuesday’s Lecture Series Alone among mammals, we adore VOICE ONE what we deplore, disasters done with such VOICE TWO every gay friend to drop before a deft hand it almost makes us believe in God. Tuesday’s lecture series features sightless we could read the future painters, tiny giants, a 19th century in his tea leaves. VOICE ONE piano prodigy who had no hands or ears. “Life isn’t fair,” Then like children coloring a landscape, VOICE TWO we demand nouns: idea of tree—falling VOICE ONE but we’re not resigned to fate, cypress; or a pet—the bunny’s absurd ears. In the hall of near extinction photos of Rothchild’s keep searching for loopholes, chapter Giraffe, Nelson’s Small-Eared Shrew, the two, happily ever after on Easter Island. VOICE TWO Otago Skink Synecdoche: figure of speech for a shrunken and too many others stare back at the viewer. VOICE ONE world, the small part—skin, skirt, hand— The children ignore our bad acting, run ahead that stands VOICE TWO to pursue the secret of the Bermuda Triangle for something realized, life sized, whole. Who’s culpable? Birthers point narrow and what really happened to Virginia Dare. fingers at the disappeared. The Androgynous BOTH Skink of New Zealand got what it deserved. BOTH Act 4: Curate the Drama Act 3: Provisional VOICE ONE VOICE ONE That attitude makes sense when we talk about VOICE ONE Optimist or Pessimist—send out the children Bonobos what with their promiscuity, The Hall of Extinct Bacteria’s provisional to argue with the wrens, or better yet on a hike so much like our unconstrained desires-- quality has been described in many uphill; there has to be a waterfall someplace. guidebooks, VOICE TWO as the family’s members reappear unexpectedly. VOICE TWO Without the boundary lines of church or Fog is water too, though no one seeks state, but what of the Howler Monkey, VOICE TWO it out, the way we falter toward sun which aside from being loud, models probity? Polarizing, our nature. or sex or what we think of as nature. The naked girl at the stag party: a virgin VOICE ONE then. What do we mean by “sacrifice?” VOICE ONE Like its companion volume, The Book of Nature Chamber music in the hen house contains multitudes. Seek, and ye shall find VOICE ONE and a mockingbird chides the fiddle proof that the earth is flat as Creationist science. In the privacy of home view the downloaded but the crowd checked irony at the gate. videos; Where does the law hideout? We’d wrap BOTH our daughters in tinfoil if it would do any good. VOICE TWO Act 2: Declarations The cloakroom grows full of discarded VOICE TWO umbrellas and dismay. What the hat check VOICE ONE Or rocket them to Pluto, where they’d highlight boy would do for something bright and floral— When authority monitors the call their hair by the glow of unnamed stars, caress we speak in unnatural tones, stumbling moonscreen into the valleys between careless limbs. VOICE ONE over our innocent tongues, stifling sweat. The junior docent would prefer the patrons VOICE ONE at least notice her jokes, rather than focusing VOICE TWO They’ll develop scopes precise enough on her tattoos, and nose-ring. Whose museum is it? Have you anything to declare? Don’t we all— to measure the vicissitudes of gravity, emotion, the pets we left behind, unfortunate affairs, the presence of a planet by its effects on a star. BOTH and unconsummated dreams, declarative The very act of preservation renatures outbursts. VOICE TWO the excluded imagination, though An exotic extended latency, each limb we’ve yet to enter the Monte Hall: VOICE ONE and synapse bathed in light; comfort so perfect A fortunate affair, the way we contract joy the body doesn’t even cross the mind. VOICE TWO from others, discrete bouts of happiness This problem concerns the cash nexus, 34 Verse wisconsin #108 April 2012 and whether it increases your chances VOICE ONE seems tempting on a rainy day. of winning to choose another door (it does.) Why anonymous when confession only a blog away in the media room? VOICE ONE VOICE ONE Text or audio speakers, you choose. To pray implies belief—though what to make And isn’t free admission a lie; the small print of the ritual of prayer before the exam—imagine notes that to witness is to confess VOICE ONE hope; don’t expect god to bubble the scantron. your interest, your participation Confession, the modern uniform— no one wants to show up naked VOICE TWO VOICE TWO or wearing the wrong designer. That bubble troubling the placid face in the human drama. Plus, a surcharge of your drink, the flay marks on your toast— if you want the curated to witness your distress VOICE TWO with invisible ink, Brown man, red robes: who’s curating BOTH exquisite old-world hands. this thing—mimes, sickos, performance artists? are you still collecting impossible portents? Cut off the hands that offend you. BOTH Musical Interlude Act 5: Refining Normal VOICE ONE The handoff is the most complex phase— Coda VOICE TWO who can catch the tumbling figures securely, Light frightens them all. They spend while preparing to pass them on to the next act. BOTH the brilliant morning in half-lit corridors And troubled days can be concealed by Venetian and before dimmed dioramas: light bleaches VOICE TWO glasses. Once you loved that hand-blown time. For the Om generation, down dog is an act rippled effect, of utter absorption. The dogma of now you can’t stop thinking “fragile expense.” VOICE ONE simplicity means flexible spines, lazy eyes. At 16 everyone wants to be “normal” No need to gawk; you’ll be back. however that is defined; but approach/ VOICE ONE For every Coliseum, a catacomb; avoidance of exposure continues— Do they hold fast to dogma, or does Dogma for every grand cathedral, a graveyard. clutch them, ready prey for a nest of mewling VOICE TWO furies, their maws always open for more. VOICE TWO Confessions in the free box, violation For every grave ill, an antidote. on chenille; we give away everything VOICE TWO but the story inside our skins For the skeptic, the position VOICE ONE is never comfortable; prayer For every grave ill, an anecdote. The Actor’s (and Intelligent Reader’s) Guide to the AVOL'S BOOKSTORE Language of Shakespeare Used & Out of Print Books 315 W. Gorham, Madison, WI by Richard DiPrima 608 255 4730 • avolsbooks.com

In my 50 years of performing the classics, I have not seen so comprehensive Mon–Fri 11–9 • Sat 10–9 • Sun 12–5 a guide for the use of Shakespeare’s language. —Randall Duk Kim, actor & co-founder of the American Players Theatre Open Mike Poetry Published by The Young Shakespeare Players, Madison, WI, 2010, 852 pp. FIRST THURSDAYS • 7 PM Available at youngshakespeareplayers.org/actors_guide.html

The Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, one of the oldest American poetry societies, sponsors local poetry events, semi-annual conferences, contests, and a yearly anthology. w WFOP offers Wisconsin i poets opportunities for fellowship and growth. Poets See wfop.org for further information.

VerseWISCONSIN.org 35 Her Piano It Ends Now There are days she polishes the case to a mirroring tool, yet never sees There’s beauty in the breakdown.—Frou Frou her own reflection, only the brilliance of a walnut face where too many ghosts A thousand April starlings let go dusk oaks all at once. The sky’s expression, half have gathered—she admires the frayed bench; brutal, half musing. Oaks. Expression. horse hair poking through; an unlikely box of music And the re-workings: Begging them to come rolled away for safekeeping where fingered keys to you, to sit still. They half listen, shift. Who once pressed with exaltation and graced says “dusk”? Besides, you look like I need a drink—cold slide of lime, juniper. Pack, the room to a sympathetic vibration unpack. Because of memory’s death-grip. Because from cross stinging glory. She’s hostage to the fever memory lets things slide: that book about Calvary, where simpatico is addictive, her hallelujah that girl with blue wings tattooed on her hidden haven; a place she remembers lost harmonies shoulders. You can make sense of it, with some rules. ‘I before E,’ ‘Red sky at night’— that trembled through the harp with pedals that sort of thing. Make sense of spring pushed beneath her feet as the weight of her body dawdling, of—the color of the sky? the great shifted into a rhapsody of days gone by cloud that starlings form, at dusk, as oaks that echoed the night-bird’s song let them go? Like that? Not those rules: but you can make sense. Stack, and swallowed wing-beats like tinseled stars collapse. The brick-pile of words. The bone- in a flickering frenzy all the way from heaven pile of words: Brinkmanship. Spring. and back. If she shared her innermost secrets, Giving back. No: giving in. The phrase, she’d tell you how she imagines lying naked weighed. The poem, hell’s handbasket. Hell’s taxonomy: kingdom, phylum, class... on the hammer and strings until the action’s But you’re making a hash of it. A dog’s completely immobilized, hitch pins locked breakfast of it. And that entropic from the weight of years she can’t forget slipping. A hill of piss. The Christ Child, 88 levers of ivory and wood pounding unforgettably appearing to Augustine, and trying to fill with the sea a hole He’d dug in into beautiful madness like a bridge between the sand. The poem, singing Love likes no laws all things near and far, her heart a collectable; like his own. The poem, whinging in a piece of vintage art. jargon. In breaking rules: Who said you could—? Who told you to—? Period. —Carol Lynn Grellas, El Dorado Hills, CA visit VW Online for audio by this author —James Scannell McCormick, Rochester, MN late in april

last year’s lilies droop down the garden wall. with all the stubbornness of the undead they refuse to be raked. the corpse of last summer, fainting ridiculously on a couch of new grass recalling the season you came back to me— when the other mouldering corpses of my past loves came running out to greet you, falling pale and starved on your neck.

today I cannot take up the compost of a year of you. not with the new lilies— already resurrecting in the peat swamp pulp of everything we didn’t clear up last fall.

—Elizabeth Cook, Madison, WI 36 Verse wisconsin #108 April 2012 Boarder Feedback For A. L. The boy breached up, up, up, up from the walk into the sky, high enough so that the sky One night, my son-in-law, the therapist, made a halo around him as his wheels were si- opined I “over-think” things. I didn’t think lenced in the air. A pinwheel of beach sand to ask him what he meant; nor did I shoot him flew up with him and just as easily fell a snappy comeback. Stayed up all that night as fireworks do, but mute, and in pastel. and thought and thought and thought some more; as light I stood aside and saw a seagull land arranged the room, decided my son-in-law, and turn. We were oblivious, all three, rude as he might be, had got that right. to cars parading up and down nearby. I brood, I ruminate on what he takes He saw the bird, the bird saw him, and I for granted—good and evil, light and shadow, saw him begin believing he could fly. subtle nuances in the nebulae. Kree kree, he said—the boy!—as if to say, I almost kissed the man for what he said, Just stay right there and watch. And then he took but, thinking it over, wrote this poem instead. the board back up and cocked his head to try again, then flapped and went and leapt and Kree, —Don Kimball, Concord, NH the seagull said, you’re flying just like me. The cars were close. All I could do was look, Luna Moth amazed. The seagull did not fly away but hopped a little closer to the boy Where had she come from, then closer still as if it would enjoy landing on the warm a turn on the boy’s skateboard, when it’s free. cement of the porch steps And when the boy alit upon the walk, that early summer day? they turned and faced each other with a squawk. Wet, it seemed, with exhaustion, she half-curled herself —James B. Nicola, New York, NY round a black spoke of the banister, pulsing there.

How far she carried me, The Man with an Ocean in Each Eye on those pale, sheer wings: back to a downtown sees everything undulate with a blue shop of my girlhood, hue. Motes large as whales rise the light green blouse with generous sleeves and fall. When he flexes his arms and long white neckstrings veins like blue tentacles thicken and then grow that must have been modeled on her, thin. He watches as your phosporescent footprint comes closer to him. When he brings himself back to this same disbelief, this ecstasy to look you in the eye, something pulses that such beauty was in your gaze, like jellyfish flicking even possible, back to her tired long strands of sensuously poisonous signals. breathing, And when he wakes one morning covered her wings stretched so wide, in sand, eggshells cracked open and sticky her long, thin antennae goo on his hands, he wonders what violence quivering there in the last sun. he has performed again on his dreams and where they have struggled their small flippers toward. —Caroline Collins, Quincy, IL

—Carol Berg, Groton, MA

VerseWISCONSIN.org 37 Wayne Horvitz’s Sweeter Than the Day Ensemble

Too prolific for words… Major improv guy (from Seattle)

So many guises & aliases

Bit parts: Ponga Bump the Renaissance

And big parts: Zony Mash Gravitas Quartet Bobby Previte (to name just a few) Bobby Previte began his life in music as a But here you are great way to acoustic meet girls, but then fell in love with the drums instead. Reaching for something nice to say Improv drum thrasher (& hello Vancouver & composer of suites Coastal Jazz & Blues & mayhem Society) Projects galore, from And doing so with Bump the Renaissance to minimal fuss Coalition of the Willing

And lovely, subtle group interplay with On the meeting girls project, your ’mashed friends this gal-lore:

It’s Zony Mash lite & truly delight- DIORAMA is an ongoing performance work in the form of a fully sweet series of solo drum concerts for one listener at a time in rotating spaces. [attractive young woman] —Stephen Bett, Vancouver, In Previte’s Diorama, each listener enters a small room and sits directly behind the drum set. British Columbia, Canada Unaware of their [sic] identity, Previte plays an improvised piece for his solo audience member. The strange, heightened intimacy of the interaction and the expansive, panoramic view of Lower Manhattan from the space create a concert of…

Well, ok, but it’s a walk-on part te-dum

*bobbyprevite.com

—Stephen Bett, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

38 Verse wisconsin #108 April 2012 ? Contributors’ Notes ? James Babbs is not a real writer but he plays one on TV. He works for the government but doesn’t like to talk about Wisconsin People & Ideas/Wisconsin Book Festival 2012 Poetry Contest awarded her both a third place and an it. He likes getting drunk and writing because both of them can be very intoxicating. He thinks poets should be honorable mention for two of her poems. treated more like rock stars and have swarms of beautiful groupies chasing them wherever they go. His books are available from www.xlibris.com, www.lulu.com, & www.interiornoisepress.com. Emilie Lindemann lives in Manitowoc County with her dairy-farmer husband. Her chapbook, Dear Minimum Wage Employee, was recently released from Dancing Girl Press. Emilie holds a PhD from the University of Alessandra Bava is a translator living and working in Rome. She holds an MA in American Literature. Publishing Wisconsin-Milwaukee and teaches at Silver Lake College. credits include Poetry Quarterly, elimae, Zouch Magazine & Miscellany, and The Anemone Sidecar.Her connections to Wisconsin are her love for the poems of Lorine Niedecker and her youthly infatuation for Little House on the Prairie. Presently Sandra Lindow is intrepid enough to attempt teaching English language learners to use the Unreal Conditional: If she had not been shoveling snow Feb. 29, she would not have broken her ankle. Guy R. Beining has had six poetry books and 25 chapbooks published over the years, and appeared in seven anthologies. He is in the Contemporary Authors Autobiography series, Vol. 30, 1998 (Gale Research). He is also in the Amit Majmudar’s first book, 0°,0° [Zero Degrees, Zero Degrees], (Northwestern University Press/TriQuarterly Dictionary of the Avant Gardes, 2nd Ed., 2000. Recent publications include chain, epiphany, perspective (Germany), Books, 2009) was a finalist for the Norma Farber First Book Award. His second book, Heaven and Earth, won the New Orleans Review, and The New Review of Literature. 2011 Donald Justice Award. His first novella,Azazil , was serialized recently in TheKenyon Review over three issues. His first novel, Partitions, was published by Henry Holt/Metropolitan in 2011. His poetry has been featured in Michael Belongie, a past president of the WFOP and coeditor of the 2007 Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar has five Poetry Daily, Poetry Magazine and The Best American Poetry 2007. published collections of poems; his most recent collection, Now Is All We Have, was co-exhibited with selected oils and watercolors of notable nature and wildlife artist, Jonathan Wilde in 2010. Charlotte Mandel is winner of the 2012 New Jersey Poets Prize. She has published seven books of poetry, the most recent, Rock Vein Sky from Midmarch Arts Press. Other titles include two poem-novellas of feminist biblical Carol Berg’s poems are forthcoming or in Artifice, Pebble Lake Review, Fifth Wednesday Journal, qarrtsiluni, re-vision—The Life of Maryand The Marriages of Jacob. An independent scholar, she has published essays on the role blossombones, and elsewhere. Two chapbooks, Ophelia Unraveling (dancing girl press), and Small Portrait and the of cinema in the life and work of poet H.D. She recently retired from teaching poetry writing at Barnard College Woman Holding A Flood In Her Mouth (Binge Press), are forthcoming. Her website is carolbergpoetry.com/wordpress/. Center for Research on Women.

Stephen Bett’s latest book of poetry is Re-Positioning (Ekstasis Editions, 2011). A thirteenth book is due to come James Scannell McCormick holds a doctorate in creative writing-poetry from Western Michigan University. His out: Fits and Starts: New & Selected Poems (Salmon Poetry, Ireland, 2012). His work has also appeared widely in works have appeared in CutBank, The Lucid Stone, SLANT, Rattapallax, and most recently in Unsplendid. He’s been Canada, the U.S., England, Australia, New Zealand, and Finland, as well as in three anthologies and on radio. nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize. He currently lives and teaches in Rochester, Minnesota. These poems are forthcoming inSound Off: a book of jazz,Thistledown Press, 2013. Visit stephenbett.com. James B. Nicola has had over two hundred poems appear in a score of publications including Tar River, The Texas Lorna Knowles Blake’s first collection of poems,Permanent Address, won the Richard Snyder Memorial Prize from the Review, The Lyric, and Nimrod. A stage director by profession, his book Playing the Audience won a CHOICE Ashland Poetry Press. She has been the recipient of a residency from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and a Award. He also won the Dana Literary Award for poetry, was nominated for a Rhysling Award, and was a featured Walter E. Dakin Fellowship from the Sewanee Writers Conference. Ms. Blake teaches creative writing at the 92ndStreet poet at the New Formalist in 2010. This is his fourth appearance inVW. Y and serves on the editorial board of Barrow Street. She lives in Cape Cod, New Orleans, and New York City. Angela Alaimo O’Donnell teaches and is associate director of Fordham University’s Curran Center for American Caroline Collins is an assistant professor of English at Quincy University. Her poems have appeared in such Catholic Studies. She wrote and performed Melvilliana at the Metropolitan Theatre in New York’s East Village as places as Fox Cry Review, Wisconsin People and Ideas, and Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies. Her chapbook part of a festival of plays devoted to Herman Melville’s novels. Her most recent book, Saint Sinatra & Other Poems Presences is forthcoming from Parallel Press. (2011), has been nominated for the Arlin G. Meyer Prize in Imaginative Writing. A finalist for the Foley Poetry Award and the Mulberry Poets Award, she has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Web prizes. Elizabeth Cook was born and raised in Madison, WI and cannot contemplate living in any other state. She went to Carroll College in Waukesha, WI, where she discovered her love of poetry. She especially enjoys writing about Monica Raymond is a playwright and poet, and her work has been recognized by the Massachusetts Cultural the beautiful Wisconsin landscape. Council in both fields. Her play The Owl Girl, a parable about Israel/Palestine, won the Peacewriting Award, the Castillo Theater prize in political playwriting, and a Clauder Competition Gold Medal.A to Z won the 2011 Ruby Bruce Dethlefsen plays bass and sings in the musical (he hopes) duo Obvious Dog, the name taken from Wiscosnin Lloyd Apsey Award for plays about race. She has been a MacDowell Colony Fellow and a Jerome Fellow at the Poet Laureate Marilyn Taylor’s description of a poem “beyond resuscitation.” His most recent collection is Playwrights’ Center, and has taught writing and interdisciplinary arts at Harvard, CUNY, and the Boston Museum Unexpected Shiny Things(Cowfeather Press, 2011). School. She works with CASA (Creative Action and Subversive Arts) at Occupy Boston, and is in her twelfth year of trying to live a carbon neutral life in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Carol Dorf’s poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She has taught in a variety of venues, including a science museum, a large urban high school, as a California-Poet-in-the-Schools, and at Berkeley City Ron Riekki’s teeth hurt and he can’t wait until he gets health insurance again. He’s also proud to have been in Verse College. She is poetry editor of Talking Writing. Wisconsin previously. (And more people should listen to The Mummers!) Kevin Drzakowski, originally from St. Louis, is an associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin- Jenna Rindo’s work has recently appeared in Crab Orchard Review and is forthcoming in Calyx, Crab Creek Review, Stout. His plays have been performed in Missouri, Michigan, Wisconsin, and New York City. In addition to and Blood and Thunder: Musings on the Art of Medicine. She lives in rural Wisconsin with her family, and small writing, Kevin acts (poorly) and directs (nearly as badly) for his local community theater. flocks of Shetland sheep and Rhode Island Red hens. She teaches English to Hmong, Kurdish, Vietnamese and Spanish students. Greer DuBois is an actress and director, a student in the Dept. of Theatre at Northwestern University, and a poet. Lou Roach, former social worker and psychotherapist, lives in Poynette. Her poems have appeared in a number Karl Elder is Poet in Residence at Lakeland College near Sheboygan, where he also facilitates Sheboygan County’s of small press publications, including Main St. Rag, Free Verse and others. She has written two books of poetry, A Mead Public Library Poetry Circle. His series of essays in response to prompts from Creative Writing Now appear Different Muse and For Now. She continues to do freelance writing, although poetry is her favorite thing to do. online at creative-writing-now.com/language-poetry.html. G. A. Saindon is 62. His wife, children, and grandchildren are the most important part of his life. He lives with R. Virgil (Ron) Ellis lives near Cambridge, Wisconsin. He is an Emeritus Professor who taught writing, literature, his wife on five acres in northeast WI. Chickens, geese, egrets, orioles, and owls keep him tuned in. He writes when and media at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. For an exploration of his work see www.poetrvellis.com. he can. Anna M. Evans is the Editor of the Raintown Review and currently teaches poetry at West Windsor Art Center. Her Terry Savoie has been published in more than a hundred and fifty literary journals, anthologies and small press chapbooks Swimming and Selected Sonnets are available from Maverick Duck Press. She has visited Michigan and publications, including Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, The Iowa Review,and The North American Illinois, which she believes are near Wisconsin. Review. William Ford has two books, The Graveyard Picnic (Mid-America Press, 2002) and Past Present Imperfect (Turning Robert Schuler has been trying to write for fifty years. His fifteenth collection of poems, The Book of Jeweled Point, 2006). Two chapbooks, Allen & Ellen and Descending with Miles, were published by Pudding House in 2010. Visions, has recently been published by Tom Montag’s MWPH Books, PO Box 8, Fairwater, WI 53931. Price: His good friend, Paul Zimmer (poet and editor), lives in Crawford County. They roam around the Kickapoo River $12.50 plus $1.50 postage. and hit the high spots of Soldiers Grove. Jo Simons is a native New Yorker but has lived in Wisconsin since 1986. Like so many others, she came here to go Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas is a six-time Pushcart nominee and a 2010 Best of the Net nominee. She is the to school and never left. She’s a piano teacher and Music Together teacher. She began writing poetry very recently author of seven chapbooks with her latest collection of poems, Epistemology of an Odd Girl, forthcoming from as her vital 94-year-old father began to decline. March Street Press. She lives in the High Country, near the base of the Sierra Foothills. According to family lore, she is a direct descendent of Robert Louis Stevenson. Thomas R. Smith lives in River Falls, Wisconsin, and is a Master Track instructor in poetry at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. His most recent collections are Kinnickinnic (Parallel Press) and a new book, The Foot David Gross lives in the foothills of the Illinois Ozarks. His work has been included in numerous literary and small- of the Rainbow, now available from Red Dragonfly Press. He posts blogs and poems on his website atwww. press journals and in four anthologies. He is the author of four chapbooks of poetry. The most recent, Pilgrimage, thomasrsmithpoet.com. was published by Finishing Line Press in 2009. Autumn Stephens is the author of the Wild Women series of women’s history and humor, and the editor of two Jerry Hauser has published 17 chapbooks in recent years and has published many more poems in journals of poetry anthologies of personal essays, Roar Softly and Carry a Great Lipstick and The Secret Lives of Lawfully Wed Wives. She and literature over a 25-year period. Currently he is finishing a book of poems under the title ofA Stir of Seasons. has written for The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, and many other publications. She is co-editor of The East Bay Monthly and conducts expressive writing workshops for people living with cancer. Karla Huston is the author of six chapbooks of poetry, most recently, An Inventory of Lost Things (Centennial Press, 2009). A broadside is forthcoming from Page 5. Her poems, reviews, and interviews have been published Jeanine Stevens was raised in Indiana. Her mother was born and raised in Wisconsin. Her poems have appeared widely. Her poem “Theory of Lipstick,” originally published inVerse Wisconsin #101, was awarded a Pushcart Prize. in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Tipton Poetry Review, and Pearl, among others. Her collection, Sailing on Milkweed, includes the poem, “Milwaukee,” and will be published by Cherry Grove Collections. Lawrence Kessenich grew up in Wisconsin and has a large extended family there. His poetry has been published in magazines such as Poetry Ireland, Cream City Review, and Atlanta Review. His poem “Angelus” won the Strokestown Nancy Takacs lives in Wellington, Utah, and in Bayfield, Wisconsin. Her third book of poetry, Juniper, was International Poetry Prize in Ireland. His essay about his Waunakee-bred father was published in the anthology This I recently published by Limberlost Press. She is the recipient of first-place poetry awards in the Utah Arts Council’s Believe: On Love. His play Ronnie’s Charger, set in Wisconsin, won the People’s Choice Award in a national competition. Original Writing Contest and the WFOP Triad Contest. A former wilderness studies instructor and creative writing professor, she has done poetry workshops in prisons, schools, and senior citizen centers for the past decade. Don Kimball is the author of two chapbooks, Journal of a Flatlander (Finishing Line Press, 2009) and Skipping Stones (Pudding House Publications, 2008). His poetry has appeared in The Formalist, The Lyric, The Blue Unicorn, Wendy Vardaman, wendyvardaman.com, is co-editor of Verse Wisconsin and Cowfeather Press, and Poet Laurete and various other journals and anthologies, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. (with Sarah Busse) of Madison. She works for The Young Shakespeare Players and likes to watch, and write poetry about, performance. Michael Kriesel’s poems have appeared in North American Review, The Progressive, and Rattle. He’s written reviews for Small Press Review and Library Journal, and he has won both the WFOP Muse Prize and the Lorine Philip Venzke grew up on a dairy farm near Colby, Wisconsin (where Colby Cheese was invented). A fervent Niedecker Award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers. He’s been nominated for nine Pushcart Prizes. Books zymurgist, his fermentations take many forms. His most recent poems have appeared in Echoes, Sheepshead Review, include Chasing Saturday Night (Marsh River Editions); Feeding My Heart To The Wind and Moths Mail The House Illumen, and Right Hand Pointing. (sunnyoutside press). David Yezzi’s latest book of poems is Azores, a Slate magazine best book of the year. He is editor of The Swallow Barbara Lightner is a 73-year old shameless agitator, retired. She grew up in rural Tennessee among sharecroppers Anthology of New American Poets and executive editor of The New Criterion. His verse plays On the Rocks and Dirty and cotton magnates, hard scrabble farmers and aristocrats. Writing poetry in law school became her escape from Dan and Other Travesties were produced by Verse Theater Manhattan at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York. He the intolerable burden of injustice by law. Her poetry has appeared in Verse Wisconsin, Poesia, the Table Rock Review, is currently writing a biography of the poet Anthony Hecht for St. Martin’s Press. New Verse News, Occupy Poetry, and the anthologies Letters to the World and So You Want to be a Memoirist. The VerseWISCONSIN.org 39 PRSRT STD US POSTAGE Verse wisconsin PAID P. O. Box 620216 MADISON WI Middleton, WI 53562-0216 PERMIT NO. 549

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Poems on “Community,” a joint project with Poetry Online By the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets & Gerald Beirne Lisa McCool-Grime versewisconsin.org at features online the 2013 Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar Kim Bridgford Gene McCormick Lisa Marie Brodsky James Scannell McCormick Gary Busha Shane McCrae Interview with Brenda Cárdenas Michael Cantor Richard Merelman Elizabeth Cleary Mary Meriam Wisconsin’s Poetry Communities— Kevin Cutrer Robert Moreland Essays & Reflections Ron Czerwien Annabelle Moseley C. Dahlen Megan Muthupandiyan Call for Holly Day Mary O’Dell Yvette Viets Flaten Annie Parcels Online Submissions Russell Gardner, Jr. Ken Pobo “It’s Political” (Fall 2012) David Graham Ron Riekki Elise Gregory Richard Roe Reading May 1-May 31 K.P. Gurney Marybeth Rua-Larsen Matthew Haughton Andrew Schilling Tim Hawkins Matthew Schumacher More Verse Wisconsin Online Elizabeth Iannaci Nancy Scott Peter Joel Kathryn Smith Poems on “Mask & Monologue” Joan Wiese Johannes Lester Smith Susan Firer, Two Dance-Poetry Collaborations Erna Kelley Elizabeth Tornes First Wave at the UW-Madison Claire Keyes Charles Trimberger Athena Kildegaard Diane Unterweger Doug Reed & The Lamentable Tragedie of Scott Walker Alan Kleiman Milla van der Have Angela Trudell Vasquez & The Latina Monologues plus book reviews, audio by print & online Michael Kriesel Marian Veverka contributors, & Wisconsin Poetry News J. Patrick Lewis Michael Vignola Lyn Lifshin Timothy Walsh Emilie Lindemann Kelley Jean White